Once And For All
by Carol Molliniere
Summary: After a hundred years, the Guardians are back up against an evil which has, somehow, caused the black Moon to turn yellow once again. Sequel to "Will They Let Us Down" and "The First Guardian".
1. Moon

**Once And For All**

**By: Carol Molliniere**

**A/N: The last installment of the ROTG/SE crossover AU (which I am going to call "The First Guardian") is now up! In which secrets come to light! In which the Guardians have to battle an enemy thought dead! In which...ah, forget it, if I said anything more, I would be spoiling you.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything that is copyrighted.**

**"The First Guardian" AU is written before I knew of the events of the fourth GoC book. Whatever. This is fanfiction.**

* * *

Up in the sky hung a black moon.

It had been that was for a century, and the heroes that battled a monster on it were already gone, save for a select few. These few would try and make sure that nothing of the sort ever happened again.

And if it did happen again, then they would be prepared.

* * *

It was a seemingly normal night when it happened.

The black Moon was there, just as always. Its eye watched the inhabitants of the Earth, being the only source of light from the sky aside from a few stars. All was quiet.

Then a shooting star appeared in the sky, It traveled close to the Moon and disappeared.

And as it disappeared, a flash of heat struck the cold night. At the same time, the black vanished from the Moon, and it became a bright yellow face again, laughing into the night.

Another shooting star appeared, this time flying away from the Moon. And the few that survived the Battle on the Moon were in shock.

* * *

In the Himalayas, a man looked up from the relics he was examining to the Moon. Upon seeing the bright yellow Moon, his eyes widened.

"No...it can't be!" he gasped, and he put a hand to his heart. Either by the shock or by the low air pressure, the man felt lightheaded, and he staggered, falling into the snow. Puffing out white breaths, his blue eyes shone as he realized what must be done.

"I have to warn the others," he muttered, and then he left, his cloak fluttering in the wind.


	2. Warning

**(A/N: And the sequel to "The First Guardian" begins...now!)**

* * *

One could agree, on a scientific note, that flowers turn into fruits with seeds inside. Flowers don't lay eggs with little sproutlings inside. Only animals lay eggs.

Well, to be fair, the eggs that sprang out of these flowers didn't hatch to become plants, and an animal – if you could call him that – owned these flowers.

The Easter Bunny watched the eggs emerge from colored petals, grow legs, and scramble off to fulfill their destiny of becoming Easter eggs. It had been this way for a hundred Easters now – and not one step out of line. They sprang out perfectly, were dyed and painted perfectly, and waddled into place perfectly until a lucky child found them on Easter day.

"_What's that over there?"_

He blinked, suddenly remembering a little girl's laughter from five hundred years ago.

"_Oh, that's a beauty!"_

Bunnymund shook his head, even as a bitter feeling washed over him – the same feeling he had when all of the Pookas had died except for him.

The air in the Warren suddenly shifted. Bunny looked up and saw a shimmering array of the Northern Lights above him, and it meant only one thing: the Guardians are to assemble yet again.

He stood and tapped on the ground with his hind paw, and as a tunnel appeared he jumped into it. Then it closed behind him.

* * *

The Sun was beginning to rise in Africa. A girl sat on the railing of the terrace of her house, watching the sky thoughtfully. Being a late sleeper, she had seen what had happened to the Moon and was wondering what it meant.

Something landed on the railing next to her. Slowly, the girl turned her head...and came face-to-face with a lovely glowing lady whose light was like that of a star. The spectral girl waved a hand at the child who stared at her in wonder.

"Hello," Katherine softly greeted, and slowly again, the girl nodded. Katherine adjusted the green book under her arm and was about to sit down on the railing when the little girl looked back to the sky again, and the spectral girl had to look as well. Bands of rainbow-like streams fluttered across the sky – the aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. Her eyes widened, then she looked back at the little girl.

"It was nice to meet you," she told the girl, then bowed politely before flying off in the direction of the North Pole.

"Goodbye, Starlight!" the little girl exclaimed.

* * *

The Moon was still out in Anchorage, and the people were still trying to reconcile their minds with what had just happened. In fact, one person was still staring at the Moon in disbelief, and perhaps also in melancholy.

Snow fell around Jack Frost as he looked at the bright yellow sneering face in the sky, and he pulled his hood further over his head. A slight twinge of pain came up his arm, and he shuddered.

_Why did the black disappear?_

_Moreover, why is the Fearling reacting to it...?_

Maybe it was the fact that the Kishin had been sealed on that Moon for a hundred years now. Maybe it was because of the Kishin's participation in Pitch's plans 500 years ago. That was probably the reason why the Fearling poison inside him was only affecting him now. And it only gave him a feeling of dread the more he thought about it.

Something big was coming, something that was strong enough to make the cover of the black blood disappear. But what?

Jack blinked, and then looked above him as trails of the Northern Lights started to appear in the night sky. He smirked.

_Well, looks like I'm about to find out._

The winter spirit stood up, and called out, "Wind!" As if in greeting, the Wind began to blow. He started running, while saying, "Take me to the North Pole!" The Wind blew again, stronger this time, and it was enough to lift him up and make him fly to his destination.

* * *

The first to come into the North Pole after Santa Claus sent out the aurora borealis was the Easter Bunny, who had immediately tried to interrogate him on what had happened, and was consequently told to wait until the other Guardians arrived. The next (much to Bunny's surprise) was Jack Frost, who kept a cool exterior but North knew that he was secretly excited about this meeting.

After Jack came, so did the Tooth Fairy, with a few of her mini-fairies, who had come back after Tooth had retrieved her centuries-old tooth box from Lord Death. (Somehow, his father had managed to track down and safe-keep quite a few of the Guardians' artifacts aside from Katherine's book.) Then the Sandman flew in on a little dreamsand train, with the spectral girl – now known as Starlight instead of Mother Goose, due to her luminescence and the lack of a goose – riding in the carriage after him. North welcomed them in as well, then looked around.

"Now," he put a hand to his beard, "we still need one more Guardian..."

As he had been saying this, someone appeared from behind him, and Katherine, Jack, and Sandy started snickering. North noticed this and, with a sly smile, turned around to see gleaming green eyes staring at him.

"There you are, Nightlight," he greeted, and the spectral boy smiled.

The Guardians had been surprised, too, when Nightlight reappeared after Maka Albarn's death. Lord Death had concluded, after a thorough analysis of the situation, that there was a great deal of magic involved in the inexplicable bond between Nightlight and Maka. However, it was very old magic – so old that not even the books from North's library contained any information on them. They came to agree months after Maka's death that they would leave the matter well alone. Nightlight was back, and that was what mattered.

Once all of them were settled, North began. "So, you all know what happened to the Moon this night. Let me explain what it means: the black blood covering on the Moon that kept the Kishin sealed tight is no more."

The Guardians' faces were all filled with horror of varying degrees at this point. Would they have to fight Asura again? Would they lose again? Katherine in particular felt her heart sink to her stomach as she looked at Nightlight – at the center of his chest, to be precise.

"We still don't know much about this yet," North continued, "but I can feel it – in my belly – that this is very serious thing we are dealing with."

"So, what're we gonna do?" Bunny asked, raising his eyebrows. "Get into battle gear and fight 'em to the death; maybe even call Lord Death and tell'em to bring in the cavalry?"

"Maybe!" North's eyes shone mischievously. "To the sleigh!"

* * *

**So, what'd you think? Pretty neat, huh? What? You're tired of all the sequels? Well, too bad.**


	3. Meeting

**(A/N: Finally, here's the next chapter! All I can say, though, is that one should expect sporadic updates when waiting for this fanfiction in particular.)**

* * *

Katherine's first time of getting into North's sleigh in a long time wasn't as easy as it seemed. She was about to tell them that she was going to take Kailash instead, but then_ Pitch killed Kailash_ came back to her and she just opted for the sleigh instead, feeling a pang once again for the Himalayan snow goose. As for Bunny, he was overjoyed when North said there wasn't going to be much room left for him in the sleigh, what with Tooth and Nightlight coming along as well, and so he got to take his tunnels. He wasn't going to sacrifice his lunch for a crazy ride, after all.

The Guardians' rendezvous would be the top of the staircase leading up to Shibusen. With that in mind, Bunny set off in his tunnels, and North snapped the reins for his reindeer to pull the sleigh along, and off they went.

The spectral girl became so caught up in the thrill of the ice tunnels that she almost forgot about Kailash's loss as the cold wind rushed in her face. Nightlight and Sandy threw their hands up somewhere in the middle of the ride, and Jack even cheered when the loop-de-loops started. Tooth was trying to hang on for as long as possible, yet her face did not show her subtle fear.

Katherine looked around her as the sleigh finally reached the ramp and went faster in the moment before it went airborne. Even though she had seen the scene before her a million times when she flew to the North Pole, the exhiliration left over from the ride made her think it was a little different. She looked down, folded her arms under her chin, and smiled in nostalgia.

_I used to see the same landscape on Kailash's back as well._

She sighed. Even after a hundred years, she had still not gotten used to being called "Starlight" by the children of Earth, now that Kailash was gone. Sure, her stories were still there, and that was one thing that hadn't changed about her role, but everything else did and it wasn't easy to let go when all the old drawings in her green book were signed "Mother Goose".

Nightlight peeked over her shoulder, and she looked at him. "Don't worry about it," she reassured him. After a moment of consideration he nodded, but remained by her side. She glanced at him again, and she listed another change to contemplate: how Nightlight didn't really ever glow anymore, and neither did he fly all that much. It was as if they had traded places since the battle with the Kishin 500 years ago.

It gave her a sense of purpose, though, now that she knew they were up against a powerful enemy. _"I can protect him now,"_ she thought, _"like he protected me back then."_ Filled with this resolve, she looked back at the snowy horizon before them.

"Alright everyone, time for shortcut!" North called out as he pulled out a snowglobe. At this, Jack eagerly went to the front of the sleigh while Tooth adjusted herself in her seat, preparing for them to speed up yet again.

"Death City," The driver told the snowglobe, shaking it, and inside the glass formed a little replica of the aforementioned city in the desert. He threw it ahead of the reindeer, creating a portal, and he snapped the reins. His passengers were thrown back yet again as they entered the portal.

* * *

Several flashes of light later, a wave of heat hit their faces, a clear sign that they were in a desert – in fact Death Valley. Right in front of the Guardians was their destination, with its red spires sticking out symmetrically.

North flew the sleigh straight to the school, catching the attention of several kids who believed in Santa Claus. They pointed out their windows at the red sleigh and flying reindeer with wonder on their faces. North, noticing them, laughed heartily and even waved a little. With that, they came to the entrance of Shibusen, where Bunny was waiting for them, painting a few eggs.

"There you are," he said as the sleigh pulled over in front of him. "Let's get this over with."

The Guardians trotted through the empty halls, hoping that they were on the right route towards the Death Room. Somehow it turned out that they weren't; and they ended up getting lost quite a few times, and it was nearly 3 AM before one of Tooth's fairies finally found them a route to the big black door that led to where they wanted to go.

When they finally stood (or levitated, in the case of Tooth and Katherine) in front of the black door, each of them felt a degree of trepidation that they had never felt before. What was behind the door, was most certainly Lord Death...but why did that make them feel so nervous?

The spectral girl closed her eyes, feeling a wave of dread wash over her. She clenched her fists together, then opened her eyes and gulped the feelings down. Now wasn't the time to be afraid. Now was the time to act.

She looked down at Sandy, and realized that he had been looking concernedly at everyone when they paused. He looked up at her, and she nodded. "We're fine, Sandy. Let's go." The Sandman nodded, and put a hand to the door. It opened quite easily, as if it had been unlocked all this time...

It was as if someone was waiting for them.

* * *

The air of dread only felt thicker on the Guardians as they came through the hallway leading to the center of the Death Room. Jack felt his stomach lurch whenever he looked up at the guillotine blades, poised to come down whenever they so pleased. He held his staff tighter. Normally he felt like he should make a weird remark about the furnishing of this place, but his companions had been too quiet, even North. He frowned and looked around. The blue sky around them seemed almost threatening.

His eyebrows creased, and that was when his ears suddenly caught the sound of conversation.

"I know what happened as well as you do. We have a serious problem on our hands," an illustrious voice said, presumably at the center of the room. It continued, "The enemy we're up against is certainly one with power like no other."

Another voice, too faint to the tone or what it said, spoke. Jack noticed that he had been craning his neck to listen, and that Katherine was coming close to him. "It's Lord Death," she looked to him. "He's talking to someone." The winter spirit nodded, trying to be polite in spite of the Fearling poison which he was now aware was acting up inside his system.

He exhaled, and put a hand to his forehead. It seemed that the closer he got, the more the poison would make him feel disturbed. Jack glanced down at his staff, noticing that it was glowing more brightly than normal. He shook his head and tried to get a hold of himself. Something that sounded like shimmering came to his left, and he saw in the corner of his eye Sandy patting his leg, trying to calm him down. They shared a look of understanding for a little while.

_Breathe._

Jack did.

After what seemed like an agonizing amount of time (though in reality it was just five minutes), they came to the center. Two cloaked figures stood at the platform, and the taller one of them was standing directly in front of a large ornate mirror. Staring over his shoulder, Jack was shocked to see a reflection of himself staring back at him, along with a reflection of the other Guardians. The glass then turned off, as if it were a television screen, and the cloaked figure turned to them, revealing the skull mask that dominated Death City. The figure seemed to regard them with an air befitting a king.

"As you know, the Guardians have seen it, too," Lord Death told the person next to him, and Jack noticed how the person didn't turn around to greet them. If anything, the person looked remarkably reluctant to see the newcomers.

"What do you think has caused this to happen?" North asked. "What's happened to the Moon?"

"We don't have the full information yet," the reaper said, "but this man here claims he can shed a little light on the situation." He gestured to the man next to him. North looked at him, and held out a hand. "Well, tell us," he said.

The man's shoulders slumped, and then he turned around, pulling the hood off his head.

And when he did, Katherine knew the reason for her dread; and Jack knew why the Fearling was reacting so strongly.

Standing in front of them was Tsar Lunar.


	4. Planning

**(A/N: I'm so sorry I didn't post this chapter. Oh well. Win some, lose some. Hope this clears up most of the sheet.)**

* * *

"YOU!"

A flash of blue lightning sprang out, and Tsar Lunar dodged just in time to avoid getting frozen to the platform.

"Jack, no!" Tooth flew over and hooked her arms under the winter spirit's shoulders, restraining him. Jack struggled against her grasp, trying to lash out at his target.

"FIVE HUNDRED YEARS, DAMMIT!" he screamed. "YOU'VE BEEN ALIVE ALL THIS TIME? YOU...YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD! WHY ARE YOU ALIVE, HUH? WHY?!" Trying to hold him further back, Tooth's eyes widened as she realized that the ice on the platform was a mixture of ice and shadows. She looked to him and found that his own eyes were now dark blue.

As Jack was flailing about in Tooth's hold, Lord Death stepped forward and, with a wave of his hand, summoned dark tendrils out of his robe to tie Jack's elbows together. With that, the winter spirit dropped his staff, though Tooth continued to hold on to him. "Jack Frost," the reaper spoke, "get a hold of yourself." The Guardian blinked, and then groaned, holding his head. When he opened his eyes, they were ice blue once more.

Yet barely any of the Guardians felt relieved by this – in fact, they felt even more trapped. Tooth looked from Jack to MiM, and her feathers ruffled threateningly.

"What are you doing here?" she asked MiM. "Why did you come here?"

Unlike with Jack, Lunar replied quickly to Toothiana's question. "I'm here to tell Lord Death about something that fell from the Moon, about the same time that the black blood disappeared from it."

"It was probably the Kishin that fell out of the Moon, for all we know," Bunny said. "How can we be so sure?" MiM shot back in a tone that was just as apprehensive. The Pooka glared at him while the Tooth Fairy moved to shield Jack from Lunar.

Breathing heavily, Jack looked up at MiM, and narrowed his eyes. "What..." he whispered, "...what do you want here?"

For some reason MiM hesitated. Then finally he replied, "I want to help, Jack." At that, the Fearling inside Jack hissed. _"He tried to kill you the last time you met, and now he says he wants to help?"_ The boy shuddered and shook his head.

Feeling the palpable tension in the air, Lord Death decided to take over. "The shooting star that appeared after the Moon turned yellow again fell to Earth," he said, creating an image on the ornate mirror. "It landed on an uninhabited island in the middle of the English Channel." The image on the mirror-turned-screen showed a crater on a very tiny island, which was still smoking. "Whether it's the Kishin or not, we can't say. If it is, then he's already gone."

"And we have to catch him," North said, but the reaper nodded absently. He was deep in thought about what Maka had told him about the Battle on the Moon – how Crona utilized BREW, the demon tool, and the Mad Blood ability to seal Asura away. Now that the black blood was gone, and therefore Crona's protection, what had happened to Crona? And moreover, what happened to BREW?

Meanwhile, North was pensively staring at the mirror-turned-screen as well. "An uninhabited island in between England and France?" he said to himself. "Even if there are no children there, this does not appear on any of our maps."

"That's because that island only appeared after you disappeared, or so Father told me," Lord Death explained. "He wouldn't say anything besides the fact that there is a dark presence on the island, and it's the reason that no one lives there. I thought it was a prison of sorts."

"Or a place to keep something secret," Katherine suggested. "Like the Lunar Lamas in the Himalayas."

"The what?"

"Sorry – it was before you were born, I think," she told the reaper.

Nightlight began to stare at the mirror-turned-screen as well. A vague memory came to him about geography books – and the sheer number of them, too – and the little green fragments scattered on the blue ocean paper. But as with many of his other memories, it vanished before he could try to recall anything else.

"Do you think you can get a closer look at the island?" Bunnymund asked, peering at the image. "Think I see an animal or something there."

Lord Death looked back at the mirror, and, as if it were a video camera, it began to zoom in on the island. There were indeed creatures there at the site of the impact, and they were sniffing at the smoke, dangerously close to the its source. Soon enough, though, the Guardians' interests were piqued – these creatures looked like lionesses, but they were ghostly – as if they were made of smoke, and black smoke at that. One of them growled, a growl that sounded both like and unlike a lion's growl. Then they trotted off, and the screen blacked out again.

"What...what _were_ those?" Jack asked, still staring at the mirror. He turned to Lord Death, but MiM was the one to answer instead. "Those are shadow creatures, just like Nightmares and Fearlings," he explained. "I'm not sure what they're called, but I know that they are the minions of the Mother of the Witches."

" 'Mother'?" Lord Death asked. "You mean the Grandwitch?"

"No," Lunar shook his head, "someone much older than the Grandwitch. In fact, she may be the dark presence on that island."

"Yes, but if she's older than Grandwitch Mabaa herself, how come neither Father nor the witches ever mention her?"

"Because she surrendered to your father after Mother Goose sealed away Pitch Black."

"It's 'Starlight' now, actually," the spectral girl said as she turned to the shorter of them. "Kailash...died while fighting Pitch. She was trying to defend Soul Eater Evans." "...Oh," MiM looked a bit surprised. "I see." Katherine nodded, looking down and pursing her lips.

Lord Death looked back to Lunar again. "A witch that surrendered to my father before the Battle on the Moon? That seems very unlikely."

"But it did happen," MiM said, "and I'm sure she had her reasons for doing it."

"So we need to get to that island to examine the situation there." The reaper decided. "I myself cannot leave Death City – Father knows what would happen in my absence – so I have to entrust this mission to people who can handle it.

"Sounds like reasonable plan," North agreed. "Why don't _we_ undertake the mission instead? Might save Shibusen a lot of trouble." At his request, Lord Death began to consider it, and then after a few moments sighed. "Alright. But once you're done, you have to report to me about the situation."

"Yes," Katherine nodded, "we understand." Jack held up his arms. "Do you mind untying me?" he asked, and Lord Death waved his hand to make the tendrils disappear back into his robe.

As the Guardians turned to leave, MiM looked up at the reaper. "So, where do you think I should go from here?" he asked. Lord Death only looked at him. "I think you would be of more help on the island than here in Death City."

Having heard this, the Guardians turned back around, their faces reading varying degrees of shock. Inside Jack's chest, something twisted. He felt like there was a clawed creature scratching at his heart – and he probably wasn't wrong.

Tooth was the one to respond verbally. "W-what? What do you mean; he's more help with us?"

Lord Death seemed to raise his eyebrows under his mask. "Of course. It seems you have a lot of catching up to do, after all."

The winter spirit's heart felt cold as Lunar's gaze moved over to him, seemingly asking for approval. Well, if he wanted approval, he wasn't going to get it. Jack pursed his lips tight, and looked away, gulping down a wad of saliva.

"Lord Death's right," MiM remarked, his face unreadable as he walked towards the guillotine hallway and past the Guardians. "We haven't seen each other at all for the past hundred years."

He paused, and looked at them once more.

"Or rather, you haven't seen me at all for the past hundred years."


	5. Investigating

**(A/N: Sorry about the inconvenience. Will be fixing things shortly.)**

* * *

The sleigh ride to the island was quick and methodical. Get in, launch, snowglobe, destination. Very odd for someone like North. Jack had reason to believe that the cause of this was the man sitting in the back of the sleigh.

When they landed, a thought (most likely from the Fearling) occurred to him: maybe he should have thrown MiM off the sleigh when he had the chance.

_Shut up._

The Guardians stepped out of the sleigh, looking around. The trees were numerous and spindly, and many of the bushes were thorny. The grass was tall around them; Sandy could barely see anything due to his height.

Katherine pursed her lips. Something felt wrong about this.

She looked to her right. MiM was already trudging through the grass; he was already a good distance away from her fellow Guardians. Somehow, this compelled the spectral girl to follow him. So follow she did. As she did, the Guardians had taken notice and started to follow her as well.

Katherine believed herself to be quite the silent flyer, but Lunar noticed her floating behind him anyway. He turned his head to look up at her for a moment, and she saw that his face was just as unreadable as it had been in the Death Room.

She disliked unreadable faces. They felt like plastic.

"I should've known you would be the first to follow me," Lunar turned back to the path in front of him, though where he was going she wasn't certain. "You're the one who's always looking out for everyone."

Katherine eyed him carefully. "Somehow I thought that description referred to you, too."

"Back when I was a Guardian, it would."

"So you're not a Guardian anymore?"

"That's up to you Guardians now." He sighed. "Not like I expected to feel welcome, though." She didn't think that he was wrong, but she wasn't going to say that.

Meanwhile, Jack watched them from his place, trailing behind the group despite how much faster he wanted to go. Katherine and MiM were talking about something. Somehow it affected him even though he didn't know what they were talking about.

_How can he act as if nothing was wrong with the people behind him?_

Jack was about to silence this thought as well, but then he realized that this one wasn't from his Fearling.

Something rustled in the bushes. He turned and pointed his staff at the threat almost instantly. By then the other Guardians had noticed as well, and he could hear North tensely drawing his swords.

A black lioness slowly crept out of the shrubbery, growling threateningly, baring its teeth at them. Jack held his staff tighter, wincing; not because of the fear, but because his Fearling was feeding off that fear. He breathed slowly and deliberately out of his nose.

In one fluid motion the black lioness pounced on him, roaring so loudly that it rang in his ears. Jack savagely kicked the shadow off of him, but it was undeterred by this and charged at him again just as he got up. It was about to strike, but Tooth flew in front of him just in time, dissolving it with her sharp wings.

The winter spirit stared at where it had once been, panting. Tooth came over to him, asking, "Jack, are you alright?" Before he could even nod, though, more growls sounded around them, and he turned to see more dark lionesses surrounding them as if the Guardians were their prey. He readied his staff once more.

Footsteps fell behind Katherine – human footsteps. She turned around to see a woman coming towards them, holding a long, thin sword. It was not the sharp black sword that could not be effaced from Katherine's memory, however. It was the blood dripping from the woman – the dark red covering her face and gown and soaking into her hair and going down her long-nailed fingers. The spectral girl tried not to gasp noisily, and instead extended an arm to shield Nightlight, who was standing next to her.

The woman looked over all of them, and narrowed her eyes. "Guardians," she recognized. Jack raised a hand, but still tightly held his staff in the other. "Yeah, that's us," he said, half-jokingly. The woman smiled at him humorlessly. "What business do you have on this island?"

"Something from the Moon crash-landed here last night, as you know." MiM had decided to take over. She looked at him. "Of course I know. Now, what is it and why do you want it so badly?"

"We're just coming here on Lord Death's orders to see what happened here."

"And why would Lord Death trouble himself over an object from space?"

"Because that object might be the Kishin."

The woman's face turned into one of surprise. Katherine saw Lunar try to hide a smirk – _sign of life,_ she thought, and it was at least better than plastic.

As for the blood-covered woman, she raised a hand to call off the black lionesses, and they vanished into shadows. Then she looked up at them, her face full of grave seriousness. "Follow me," she said, and turned back towards the spindly trees.

Jack stared after the woman. "Is that...?"

"Guess it is, mate," Bunny put his paws on his hips. "Mother of the Witches; formerly the Shadow in the Mirror, Bloody Mary."

The winter spirit nodded, and then his eyes wandered to where MiM was – but he had already gone after the woman.

* * *

"You don't need to thank me, you know," Bloody Mary said to her pursuer, who was busy trying to keep following her despite the various plants blocking his way.

"I'm going to thank you anyway," MiM returned as he pushed a low branch out of his way. She stepped over a rock in the path. "Then, your welcome, Man in the Moon." Lunar paused. "How did you know that when you've never met me in person before?"

"None of the Guardians can speak as diplomatically as you do," Mary said. Then she half-smiled. "And all this time I thought you would be taller."

"Not the first time I've heard that," MiM retorted, though he sounded a little miffed.

Footsteps crunched through the tall grass. Mary simply said, "Your Guardians are catching up." MiM glanced behind him, and then sped up, until he was nearly stepping on the hem of her dress. She blinked, not looking at him. "Why are you so eager to avoid their company? Are you not their leader?"

"I don't think they would call me that," Lunar frowned. "And they aren't exactly 'my' Guardians anymore."

"Are you only comfortable talking with me because I've managed to stay in this world for five hundred years without disappearing?" The woman turned her sword in her hand. It showed a clear image of her pursuer's face. _Of course,_ MiM thought.

"You really shouldn't be. I've killed tons of people without remorse. The only reason I'm still here is because I surrendered to Lord Death." Through the metal blade of the sword, he could see Mary blink. "How is he, by the way; haven't got a scrap of news in about four hundred years."

"He's dead. His son has taken over his position now."

"Well," she tilted her head as they began to reach a clearing, "the great Lord Death dies, what irony. And I've never heard a thing about this son."

"You've missed a lot, Bloody Mary."

"So have you."

There was a silence between them before a while before Lunar decided to say, "The Protectors are dead, too." The half-smirk was back when it was Mary's turn to pause. She was frozen for a while – and so was the look of pure shock on her face – before the sound of footsteps came back and she was forced to trudge through the last of the tall grass.

"Shame," she rubbed at the blood on her face, "I liked fighting with them. Especially the Matchmaker. One stab to his wing and what was pain to him would be joy to me!"

She stopped. "Shame, indeed," Mary added, loud enough so that the Guardians could hear. When they finally caught up to Mary and MiM, the former pointed in front of herself with her sword.

"There it is," she told them. "Now investigate."

North was the first to come forward and slide down to the center of the crater. Following after him was Katherine, and then Bunny, and the rest came in their own time.

What they saw at the site was a strange mass; no longer smoky, and it appeared to be a creature of sorts. Tentatively, they came forward, Jack holding up his staff again cautiously.

What they had been approaching so tensely, though, turned out to be nothing more than a limp body – and they recognized it to be that of the Kishin Asura's. In the body's mouth was an ancient-looking book, which had scorch marks on its cover. The winter spirit's heart began to palpitate as he reached out with his staff to touch the body. It didn't move.

Suddenly, an anguished scream rang out. They all turned to see Lunar, wide-eyed and holding his head in his hands. Not only that, but he was gasping for air and hunched over – the very essence of panicked. Jack was about to ask if it was about the body when MiM shouted again.

"NOT YOU!" he yelled. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" At this the first pang of madness struck the winter spirit, and the Fearling inside him cackled.

Just as this happened, the body began to move. It got up on its knuckles and knees, and spit out the burned book in its mouth, Then it looked straight at him as it got to its feet – and Jack could feel indeed that this was the same Kishin they had fought 500 years ago. He raised his staff as the threat began to rise up on its tendrils of skin, like a snake getting ready to strike. In a second, strike it did – but then Jack quickly sent out a bolt of ice lightning towards it, freezing the skin tendrils in mid-air.

"Jack!"

The sound of Katherine's voice brought him back into reality. He blinked, and then realized that he had been hallucinating. The body was not alive, and the burnt book was still grotesquely placed in its mouth. What Jack had really done was send out large ice spikes in a circle around him to try and impale the Guardians; they had only been able to save their necks by either ducking under the spikes or pinning themselves to the crater walls, where the spikes had only stopped by half an inch short of their necks.

He looked around at what he had done, and then dropped his staff as he held his hands up. "Oh, no," he gasped, barely above a stage whisper. "I'm sorry! I-I didn't–!"

A shadow moved from the lip of the crater, past Jack, and straight to MiM. Out of this shadow Bloody Mary materialized, and she pointed her sword at Lunar's back – as if the ice spike nearly cutting his head off wasn't enough.

"What did you do?" she asked. "What happened?!"

MiM coughed, and looked at the woman without turning his head. "I didn't do anything," he said, almost hoarsely, "but I think I know who did this."


	6. Finding

**(A/N: Sorry for not updating sooner. Other fandoms got in the way. Oh well, I'll still continue this story. Don't worry.)**

* * *

Even with that explanation, Mary still held the sword above his heart. "And are you seriously suggesting that the person who did this..." Before she could say anymore, though, MiM stared her down, and she trailed off.

Mary sighed, and then pointed the sword away from him before turning it downwards. She then slammed it down onto the ground, and the ice shattered with the force of the blow. Jack flinched a little at the sound of the ice breaking.

"You should know that you have much to say to Lord Death about this," she warned MiM. He nodded, but still kept his eyes fixed on hers. She raised an eyebrow, and then turned away, summoning a black lioness out of her shadows.

"You, follow me," she said to MiM, "and the rest of you sort things out." With that, she jumped onto the shadow, and they sped up and out of the crater. MiM stared after her, and sighed, then tried to climb up the crater wall. One hand up, then a foot raised as another hand went up, and the first hand tried to feel around for another hold.

Suddenly, arms wrapped around him, under his arms, and he turned to see that it was Katherine who was lifting him up to the lip of the crater. When she finally set him down, at the top, MiM looked round at her.

"Thank you," he said, sounding a bit stunned.

"Don't mention it," the spectral girl smiled faintly, and drifted back to the center, where the Guardians were. Lunar stared after her glowing form, and then turned his head in the direction of where Mary left.

* * *

Katherine couldn't help but notice that most of the Guardians were staring at her obtrusively when she came back. She tried not to show her discomfort as she landed next to Nightlight, and looked up to face them.

"You have any idea about what happened here?" Bunny asked, in an attempt to dispel the tension in the air. Tooth followed accordingly. "Judging by the scorch marks on this book," she gingerly took the book out of the body's mouth as she said this, "all the black blood was not just driven away; it was evaporated from the Moon by something hot enough to even burn it out of the Kishin's body."

She stared at the book a little, and then dropped it to the ground. Jack and North moved to support her, but she held a hand up while the other went to her head. "It's fine," she said. "But we have to get rid of this book. It has a high level of insanity in it." Jack looked down at the book again, and inhaled sharply, realizing that Tooth was right. He inched a little away from it while Katherine spoke up.

"But I don't understand," she said. "The Moon is far away enough from any source of heat. What could possibly generate enough..." Her grey eyes widened as she trailed off.

"Katherine?" North asked in a concerned tone. Her mouth fell open, yet she could not say anything.

It seemed to her that the scorch marks on the book had begun to look like hand-prints.

* * *

MiM had finally caught up to Bloody Mary after several minutes of searching through shrubbery. She was still riding her shadow-lioness, and didn't even turn around to look at him.

"You took quite a while," she said, amused. He pursed his lips. "If I had a staff and more holds on the crater wall, it might have been easier."

"You had about four Guardians with the ability to fly, though; you could have asked them for help."

He looked back – was Katherine's assistance still on his mind? – and then shook his head. "I don't _have_ Guardians, Mary."

"So we're on first-name basis now?" the woman raised her eyebrows. "About five hundred years ago you would have declared war against me." MiM's brow creased. "I can't now because you've declared yourself a Neutral ever since Pitch was sealed away."

"Contrary to what your history would tell you," this time she turned around to look at him while her lioness continued walking, "I didn't surrender after Pitch lost, I'm the reason why Lord Death knew where they were that night. Where _you_ were that night."

"You would betray the man who raised you from the dead?"

"You betrayed your Guardians."

"I..." MiM looked down at his feet, and Mary was pleased to know she had wounded him. He looked back up at her. "Where are you taking me?"

They had begun to walk into a dark cave, and Lunar slowed down to feel his way around. Mary turned back to the front to hold on closer to the lion, who was already experienced enough with the cave walls to not slip. She led him further into the cave until there was nearly no more light left to guide MiM inside. He had the notion that the Mother of the Witches could see just fine in the dark, though – she kept warning him about incoming stalagmites and nagging him to "watch his step".

"Here it is," she said after some time, getting off the shadow-lioness and patting it on the head before leaning down to move some rocks out of the way. Finally she picked up a strange, long object, and one could see that it was metallic enough to shine in what little light was available.

"I believe this is yours," Mary said, handing it to him. Lunar grabbed it from her, and recognized it from the feel of it. It was, of course, his old moon-staff.

"Why would the former Lord Death even hide this here?" MiM said, still relishing the touch of the cool stardust-metal. "This is only useless for someone who doesn't know how to use it."

"One of Lord Death's little friends made some improvements to it," Mary explained, getting back on her shadow-lioness. The lion turned around and began trotting back to the mouth of the cavern. MiM looked once more at the moon-staff in his hand, and then followed after her.

* * *

"Katherine?"

"Katherine, what's wrong?"

She tried to blink. Her head hurt.

"Katherine?"

_Hand-prints on the book. Someone touched it. Only one person could have touched it like that._

_But..._

She put her hands to her head, wringing her hair. Nightlight's own hand was reaching out to her, but she didn't really want to react. Not when the scorch marks were staring at her.

_...but..._

"Katherine?"

She looked up at the sound of Nightlight's voice. She felt strangely breathless, and straightened up.

"That book..." she turned back to it, and narrowed her eyes. The Guardians watched as she almost reached to pick it up, but instead settled for just pointing at it. "...do you know any other way it could get those scorch marks?" Nightlight followed her finger, and then his pale green eyes widened. His look of worry was shared by the other Guardians as well.

"You can't possibly mean..." Tooth trailed off. Katherine nodded. "I know it's her."

"But didn't you and Maka Albarn see her die?" Jack asked, moving his staff from one hand to another. The spectral girl looked to him, her face showing a revelation. "I don't think...that was it at all..." she said slowly. "We only...we only saw her fall, we didn't see her dead." She looked down at her feet. As she did so, Nightlight blinked, and for a moment he smelled fire – warm smoky smell – but it was gone before he looked up to see where it was coming from.

"But what happened to the Kishin?" Bunny asked. "What could have possibly made him like...this?" He gestured to the body as if to prove his point. The Guardians mulled over it for some time, and then a dreamsand light bulb appeared over Sandy's head.

"What is it, Sandy?" North asked. Sandy replied by showing them an image of a body, then a soul, then a book. Nightlight nodded in understanding, but Jack stared as Sandy repeated the sequence, quite confused. "Uh...what?" he asked, squinting a little.

Sandy all but rolled his eyes, conjured a giant dreamsand hand, and picked up the charred book with it. He then proceeded to show a picture of the Kishin's eye, and then an arrow pointing down at the book. At least this the Guardians could now easily understand.

"So...what you're saying is that the Kishin became sealed in that book?" Jack said after a pause, pointing at the book. The Sandman nodded. The winter spirit looked down at it, suddenly feeling the supposed dread that was felt whenever something bad was about to happen. He licked his upper lip anxiously, and then sighed.

"We have to get back."

"I agree."

The Guardians looked up to see Bloody Mary at the lip of the crater. She stared down at them, seemingly passive if it weren't for the excited (thrilled?) look in her eyes. "You can't stay here forever standing around a dead body; you've got to report to Lord Death."

"Yeah, we know," Jack said, floating back up to the top, with Sandy and Katherine in tow. "Can you tell us where the sleigh is?" The woman pointed a thin finger towards a black lioness. "She'll show you the way." He looked from the lion to her, and raised his eyebrows. "Thanks," he responded, a little quietly. He was just about to go over to it when Mary placed a hand on his arm.

"Frost," she said delicately, "it can lock the demon tool back into place."

"Huh? The lion?" Jack asked, and Mary blinked, as if she had never meant to say what she just said. "I don't know," she answered. "Go ask someone else."

A little put off by the awkwardness of the situation, Jack pulled his hand back. "Yeah. Alright." He turned back towards the shadow-lioness, and it turned around and started walking. Sandy and Katherine were already following behind it, and the other Guardians were coming out of the crater, and Jack didn't have much choice but to follow them. He gave one last glance at the bleeding woman they were leaving behind, but she was already gone.

* * *

They trekked through the sharp shrubbery, trying to be as agile as the dark animal was. All the while Katherine's thoughts wandered from the book Sandy was carrying – _it carries the Kishin's soul, no wonder it feels wrong – _to where Lunar was. Maybe they had left him behind? She wanted to ask, but MiM was really such a sensitive topic at the time so she felt she should just let it drop. He'll probably run into them eventually.

The lion stopped in the middle of a grassy plain, and then it vanished. When it did, the Guardians found themselves standing in front of North's sleigh. North let out a long, tired sigh, and started walking towards it. "Time to go and see what becomes of this," he said, but then stopped.

Bunny came forward. "Why? What is it?" North pointed to something inside the sleigh, and the Pooka followed his finger to a certain moon-staff sticking out of it, and then to its owner who was scratching something on the side with his nails.

"Hey!" Bunnymund shouted, loud enough to break MiM from his trance. He looked over his shoulder blankly while Bunny continued. "What're you doin' down there? Tryin' to hurt yourself or somethin'?" Lunar looked from him to his carving – still unseen – and then back to who was talking to him. "Or something," he said, straightening up and sitting down on a seat, holding on to his moon-staff. The Pooka narrowed his eyes, but in the end gruffly asked him to move over to make room for the others. While MiM did so, Tooth and Sandy told North that they would be flying to Death City ahead of them, and so Tooth fluttered away in the direction of America while Sandy made himself a dreamsand convertible and sped off with the burnt book still on his person.

That left Bunny, Nightlight, Katherine and Jack to share the backseat with the elephant in the room. The winter spirit moved to stand behind the driver's seat, while Bunny moved closer to the other end of the sleigh (if he threw up, well, at least it wouldn't be inside the vehicle). Katherine and Nightlight sat down in the middle, the spectral girl being the closest to MiM.

"Alright, everyone settled?" North asked, turning to look at them. "Yeah," the Guardians chimed (with Bunny sounding a little anxious to get it over with). But Santa didn't even wait for the elephant in the room to respond before he snapped the reins, and they were headed for Shibusen once more.


	7. Reporting

The silence in the sleigh was overwhelming yet again. Katherine's eyebrows creased. Someone had to say _something._ Blankly, she looked down at the spot that Lunar's leg had been obscuring – what he had been carving moments before. Her grey eyes caught the word _can't_ and then she started reading before she knew it. It was a short message – all it said was

_**can't be you**_

_**can't be you**_

_**can't be you**_

_**can't be you**_

over and over again, like a child writes statements repeatedly on a chalkboard as punishment. Was this some kind of punishment? Katherine squinted, and then a hand fell on her shoulder.

"You're more observant than I thought," MiM's deep voice whispered, "Starlight." She looked up at him, and thought that she saw pain. _Might just be me wanting to humanize him._ "You can call me Katherine," she whispered back – _who are we afraid will hear us? –_ and he removed his hand from her shoulder. "Alright then." She glanced once more at the carving, and then at his scratched right fingernails (_how long had he been doing that?_) before opening her mouth once more.

"...You've seen her too, haven't you?" Frankly, the sudden reappearance of the moon-staff weighed heavier on her minds than the others, but she thought it was best that she ask this one first.

"You mean the Woman in the Sun?" he said bluntly, his face hard to read. "Yes, I have. That's why I screamed." He turned and tried to look at her again. "It's not the first time, though. She's always coming to me in dreams. I never believed she was dead."

"You knew we thought she was dead?"

"Yes. But your reports say you never found the body, so what cause is there to think she's really dead?" MiM half-chuckled. "Granted, there was no body left over when Sanderson died, but the way he died, it was hardly a surprise, consumed by all that sand. But you say she fell. Adding that to your 'no body found', I assumed she simply flew away." Katherine stared at him, and then put a finger to her chin. "What's she planning? Why would she have to take the Kishin's body away from the Moon and seal his and Crona's souls into a book?"

"She had to take something. It must have been important, else she wouldn't have spent a hundred years planning for this." MiM looked from her to his moon-staff. Katherine stared up at it as well. "Where did you get that?" she pointed at it. Lunar smiled. "The woman on that island isn't as bad as I thought."

From the front of the sleigh, Jack watched them, and wished he could tear his eyes away from them. He pursed his lips, and then turned to North. "How much longer to Death City?"

"Not very long," Santa Claus said as he finally pulled out a snow globe, which began to show the castle-esque school of Shibusen.

* * *

"So, the body of the Kishin is entirely harmless on that island?" Lord Death asked, crossing his arms.

"Yeah," Bunny nodded. "We did find this book, though." Sandy came forward, still holding the burnt book, and handed it to the reaper, who took it at once and stared down at it.

"I can't believe it; after all these years..." Dare he flip through it? After what he experienced, probably not.

"...Do you know what this is? This is the Book of Eibon. I haven't seen this book in a long, long time."

"Sandy thinks the Kishin's soul is inside that book," Tooth added. Lord Death nodded. "He's probably not wrong. Also, maybe Crona's soul is in here, too."

"Crona?" North asked, raising an eyebrow. Katherine held up her book. "The one who sealed away the Kishin using the black blood. Maka talked about him* a lot." She turned to a page that showed, somehow, a drawing of Crona (possibly Maka had told her what the Demon Swordsman looked like).

Lord Death glanced at the book, and said, "Crona was actually a little thinner than that, and the hair was shorter."

"Oh, sorry," the spectral girl looked up at him.

"No, it's...fine." he replied.

"We also suspect that the Woman in the Sun was the one that did this to the Moon," MiM finally said. "The scorched portions on the cover are probably where she touched the book." Lord Death looked back at the cover, and under his mask, his eyes widened.

"The Woman in the Sun..." he sighed. "Of course. Maybe I should have looked more into that, but the case went cold." The reaper tucked the Book of Eibon into his robe. "This is bad. I think she took the demonic tool BREW – that's why she went to the Moon and evaporated the black blood."

"What do you think she's going to use it for?" Katherine asked. Lord Death sighed. "One could use BREW for anything; it is a completely amoral tool, as well as immensely powerful. And in the wrong hands, it could do more damage than we could ever think possible."

He turned back towards the mirror in the Death Room, looking at his reflection. _How much had changed since we had to deal with something like this again...?_ Lord Death looked back down to the book in his hand. The old insanity was inside there, but seemingly pressurized. He could easily fight it, or at least control it. He remembered feeling this for the first time, how it made him so vulnerable...

Katherine looked at the reaper, and then to Jack. Jack was looking down at the ground, his lips pursed. She didn't know what to say to him, even though she felt that she could sense the conflicting emotions inside of him. She turned her head to where MiM was standing, and wasn't surprised to see that he had the same expression as Jack had on his face.

_They're not so different, those two._

"You can go now," Lord Death said suddenly, and the Guardians looked up at the sound of his voice. "I'll have to think this over, and see what we can do about it. Though if you find a solution before me, I'll be glad to hear it."

"Yes, sir," Katherine said, and they nodded to the reaper before leaving the room. Lord Death looked down to the book in his hand, and like the leaving Guardians, felt an overwhelming sense of dread.

* * *

**(A/N: * - What is Crona's gender? No one knows, but I just put the pronoun "him" because it is grammatically correct and not because of preference for a male Crona.**

**Sorry if this was so short, I just ran out of material for this chapter. Hopefully the next one will be a little longer, and fix a few plot holes that you might have already noticed.)**


	8. Dreaming

**(A/N: Late chapter again? Yeah, I know. Don't remind me.)**

* * *

Jack had left the Death Room ahead of the other Guardians, preferring to fly up to the higher balconies of Shibusen and think for a moment. He just had to be alone for now, had to think for a while.

(The five hundred years had _had_ to change him a little; this change manifested itself in the form of him becoming more reflective.)

He thought about Maka first, for some reason. Their snowball fights had been nothing but happy memories, even as Soul threw insults as well as handfuls of ice. For the first time in centuries, he had _fun_ with someone who believed in him. He had made his believers _happy._

Jack liked to dwell on these memories of simpler times, and decided to when he felt the Fearling inside of him calm. He closed his eyes, trying to remember more good memories.

* * *

When he opened his eyes, though, there was a deep red sky above him. Had the sun set already? No, Jack thought, hadn't it just risen? Then what was this? He stood up, and clenched his fist tighter around his staff. Something was off. Was this a dream? Or a nightmare, maybe?

"What is this?" the winter spirit asked himself. He looked around as the Fearling inside him grew agitated, and began to murmur many a threat into his brain. "Shut up!" he told it, though he felt like he wasn't talking to a monster anymore, but to himself. _Great._

"Well, if it isn't the Guardian Jack Frost," a female voice said behind him. Jack inhaled sharply, and turned around to point his staff at the figure behind him. What he saw was a woman dressed in red, towering tall above him. She wore a grin that stretched from ear to ear, and held a sun-staff in her hand that matched Katherine's illustrations of her.

"What do you want?" Jack asked Lady Solar. She giggled, a sound that would have been pleasant if it didn't come from someone smiling as threateningly as her. "You know exactly what I want, Jack!" WiS said playfully.

Jack rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw. "Why do you expect me to know everything?" he snapped. For a moment, WiS's eyes darkened, but then they were filled with pity – sickening the shadow monster inside him. "You're of age, Jack, _of course_ you should know this!" she said. "If you hadn't figured it out already, then you must clearly be just another _idiot_."

At the last word, Jack raised his staff and shot icy lightning at her. WiS only dodged and was in front of him in one fluid motion. In the split second that Jack noticed she wasn't wearing her sun necklace she pressed her palm against his stomach and knocked him off his feet with her staff. He fell to the ground on his stomach, and felt her foot shove his face onto the floor.

"I want you to tell Lord Death I've already won and that he should give up," Solar said venomously. Jack grunted and tried to turn, enough so that he could look her in the eye. "How can you be so sure you've already won?"

Somehow WiS's grin managed to widen, and she reached to her belt, pulling something out. "Because I have _this_," she said, wagging a blue cube in front of Jack's face. "The demonic tool BREW. With it, I'll..."

She took her foot off his head, and Jack turned onto his back as WiS trailed off, then started to laugh so hard he thought that she would lose oxygen. "...What?" he insistently asked. "What'll you do with it?"

Regaining her composure, she replied, "Oh, sweet Jack, it's not _me_ you should be asking, really."

He got to his feet, grabbing his staff, and then pointed it at her. "Then who _should_ I ask?"

"Jack," she loomed over him, baring more teeth in her smile, "_you already know!"_

Crying out, Jack shot out a large bolt of lightning.

* * *

The lightning, however, hit metal instead of a person. Jack blinked, and lowered his staff to find himself back in reality. There was a person standing in front of him; however, it was not the Woman in the Sun.

MiM lowered his now-frozen staff as well, and glanced up at Jack. "Are you alright?"

Jack raised his head to look at the Sun – _what just happened?_ – and then he lowered it again, but still didn't answer MiM.

That was the Woman in the Sun. Oh man, he had to tell someone. She had BREW, she was going to do _something_ with it, oh man. He scratched his head. What is she going to do?

"Jack?"

"Huh?" The winter spirit looked back to MiM, who was still standing there. "Did something happen?"

_How am I supposed to answer that?_ "I...guess?" Jack didn't know how to hide his discomfort around Lunar. He thought he would say something a little meaner, something that showed the bitterness he felt back in the sleigh and the Death Room. Instead he found himself saying nothing at all.

MiM looked up as well, perhaps towards the Sun, and then looked back to Jack. "Was that the Woman in the Sun, Jack?"

"H-huh?" _How did he know about that?_ "Yeah...I guess that was her..." Jack decided to reply, looking away. MiM wouldn't turn his gaze away from Jack, though. "Jack," he said, and Jack didn't know if he was ready to admit that the tone was almost gentle. "What did she tell you?"

"Nothing!" the winter spirit said, starting to pace. "She wouldn't tell me anything, she always told me that I 'knew'. I don't! I don't know anything alright? I don't even know who _else_ would know..." Jack trailed off as he finally looked down at Lunar.

_The Man in the Moon knows._

_How much does he know?_

"Aren't you going to tell the others?" MiM asked. Jack blinked, and tried to avert his eyes in order to not look suspicious. "Maybe...maybe we should tell the others." Luckily for Jack, the person in front of him nodded and turned back towards the door, not asking any more questions. The winter spirit decided to follow him back inside the building.

_Is he somehow involved in the Woman in the Sun's plans?_

* * *

Half an hour later, after telling the other Guardians what had happened, they had become even more tense than they were before.

"We've confirmed now that she's got BREW, and that she's probably gonna do somethin' bad with it," Bunny concluded.

"But what do you think she's going to do? Attack us? Try to defeat Lord Death or something?" asked Tooth, whose feathers were already beginning to ruffle.

"Whatever it is, she's getting cocky about it," the Pooka pondered. "Though to be fair, BREW is a powerful weapon. Lord Death knows what it's done a few hundred years ago; what with usin' its ability to seal the Kishin onto the Moon and all."

"What I really don't understand is how she was able to make us believe she was really gone," Katherine said in a low tone, yet they looked up to see her. "Or rather, how she made us stop looking for her."

Jack watched them with pursed lips, wanting to speak with them, to say something, but he didn't know what to say. A snide comment would do, but maybe not now. The shadow in his blood was currently murmuring something, though he didn't really have the heart to figure out what it was right now.

His eyes wandered over to MiM, who had been standing beside him the whole time. He hadn't said a thing for the entire conversation. Perhaps all the talk about a friend-turned-enemy got to him. Nightlight had said that the Woman in the Sun was a being almost as old as the Man in the Moon, after all, and watched over the Earth like he did. They might've been friends, and her betrayal would've hurt...

_Why do you care if he's been hurt?_

Was that what the Fearling had been whispering all this time?

_Why do you care about him at all?_

Jack shook his head and tried to think of something else.

_If the Woman in the Sun watched over Earth, why would she want to harm it now?_

_What could possibly make her want to do this?_

And once again, he wondered if it had something to do with Lunar.

"Whatever it is," North's voice brought Jack back to reality, "we must stop her at all costs. We have to find her, and stop her plan before she carries it out."

"But how are we going to get to her?" Tooth asked. "She's in _outer space_, for all we know."

"Simple. We go where Maka Albarn had gone a hundred years ago, to defeat the Kishin Asura."

At this, the Guardians' eyes had widened. Tooth raised her hand to her mouth. "You don't mean..."

"To stop the Woman in the Sun," North concluded, "we are going to the Moon."

* * *

**(A/N: Well...off to the Moon once again for us! Sorry for the sloppy chapter, I've been tired lately. Whatever.****)**


	9. Traveling

**(A/N: Did I say hiatus until halfway through March? I think I meant the next chapter after this one...As well as the next chapter of Reverse Falls...**

**Anyway, ROTG/GOC does not belong to me. And this was written before the fifth Guardians of Childhood novel came out. And just in case, also written before the third Guardians of Childhood picture book.**

* * *

After an extremely rushed explanation to Lord Death of their predicament, the Guardians had banded together and began to discuss their plans with each other.

"So, how do you think we're gonna get to the Moon?" Bunny asked. "I mean, we cert'nly can't take the sleigh; the reindeer can't breathe."

"Well, what about tunnels?" North suggested.

"They're only on Earth. And what makes 'ya think I'd make passages leading to a Moon with a creepy-'s-heck face?!"

"It could come in handy!"

"What about the Lunar Lamadary?" the storyteller decided to nip their growing argument in the bud. "There's probably still a bit of post-Golden Age technology in there."

"Yeah," Tooth joined in. "I haven't been there in a while either; but I bet there's gonna be something that we could use there!"

"Well, I guess that settles it," North said, having completely dropped his argument with Bunny. "But we're taking the sleigh their first! So, who volunteers to use their own method of transportation to save room in the sleigh!"

* * *

Jack looked over the edge of the sleigh. Of course, he had been to the Himalayan mountains before; the snow-capped peaks Jack Frost was no stranger to. What probably seemed so surreal about this current trip was the purpose of it. He was coming here to save everyone from whatever the Woman in the Sun was planning – certainly not like the other times he came here just for solace.

Someone else stared over the edge with him. "It's a lot different from here, huh?" the soothing voice of the Tooth Fairy asked. The winter spirit turned to look up at her. "Yeah, I...guess." Jack decided to say.

He felt a lot better for some reason when Tooth gave him a motherly smile instead of looking back over the edge. "You know, Jack, I've noticed you've been a lot more reserved lately."

"Really?" he asked.

"Really," she affirmed. Jack's eyes darted back to the mountainous landscape. "I don't know, Tooth. I mean," he tried to laugh, "it's not everyday that you thought something was gone for good, and then it comes back to kick your legs out from under you."

He felt like he had been referring to Solar in that part of the sentence, but he knew that Tooth thought he was referring to Lunar.

"None of us were prepared for it either, Jack." she said, the one statement that confirmed his theory. "It doesn't take Lord Death to know that we're still feeling bitter from the last time we saw him, after all." He nodded, pursing his lips as she continued. "But no matter how long it's gonna take us to understand why, we just have to accept that it happened."

Jack swallowed. It wasn't the winter air that made him feel colder than he already was.

"Jack?"

He looked at her. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"Do you want to tell me?"

The winter spirit looked away – but he told her.

"He said he came back to help," he half-whispered. "Then why hasn't he tried to apologize to us? Katherine – he's talking to her like they didn't try to kill each other. Why?"

Tooth looked gently and firmly at him. "Katherine – she sees things in people that lots of the older spirits can't. Maybe she thought he was worth forgiving for a reason we don't know."

"Then..." Jack didn't know what to say next; he remembered how Lunar told him he was worthless in the past, but he remembered just as clearly the look of subtle concern he had been given by the same man, just a few hours ago...

"It's alright to think about it, Jack," she reassured him. "Just know, people say sorry in a lot of different ways." Jack nodded, still looking away. He didn't think he wanted her to see his watery eyes.

"Thanks for the advice, Tooth."

"Anytime, Jack."

He glanced at her for a split second, and knew that at least one person understood him.

* * *

Their flight had gone on for ten more minutes before the sleigh touched down onto a particular mountain. Nightlight leaped out first, then Katherine and then the others. North looked around at their surroundings, seeing if this really was the place they had to go to.

"This takes me back," he said to no one in particular. He recalled the battle with Pitch here, with the moonbeams and the enslavement spell and Ombric – oh, it seemed so long ago, and the strangest part was that it was. He sighed and began to remember once more everything that happened here.

Behind him, the Easter Bunny popped out of a tunnel, looked around, and sighed. "Didn't expect t'be able to come back here," Bunny said. "Not after 500 years ago."

"Well, here we are again at least." Katherine looked at the large front doors. "The Lunar Lamadary." She stole a look at MiM, and found that he was staring straight ahead of himself, also at the large front doors. He stepped forward, and then pushed one of them open.

One by one, the Guardians stepped into the Lunar Lamadary. Somehow, they were expecting the interior to be empty – it felt like no one had set foot through these doors for a long time – they just didn't know how to deal with it being completely and utterly..._lifeless._ There were no sounds of life anywhere; no human voices, no yetis stomping around, no Snow Geese honking, just silence that had been broken by their presence. They continued on nonetheless, looking for anything that might get them where the reindeer couldn't go.

Jack looked around with awe at the artifacts once so carefully stored within the Lamadary, but now covered in dust. He walked over to a glass case, and wiped off the filth. Inside the case were two rings, made out of what looked like gold. He wiped off more dust to get a closer look, then he saw reflected in the glass a coat going through a doorway.

It was Lunar's coat.

Jack turned around before it was completely gone, and flew after it, unseen by his fellow Guardians.


	10. Telling

**(A/N: Sorry for the long wait. Actually, I'm even more sorry that this chapter may not be worth the long wait.**

**This fanfiction was written long before the latest Guardians of Childhood book was released.)**

* * *

_Where's he going?_

The winter spirit, if asked later, would minimize the amount of worry that he felt at that moment. He realized just how little they knew about MiM at this time; they could be caught off guard by a hidden agenda.

He flew round a corner, and found himself in a grand room. It was big enough to maybe include a few rooms of an ordinary house – Jack could tell he had stepped into a venue used for gatherings. In the middle of this room stood a large gong, larger than any he had ever seen. Like the two rings, it was made from a gold-like metal, and it was engraved with a great many images and even more words which Jack could barely understand.

Standing in front of this massive gong was Lunar himself, staring at the instrument ever so intensely. When Jack got closer, he could see that MiM's eyes were filled with an intense sadness. Then the winter spirit turned to the gong.

The images on it seemed like a thing out of a child's book – a ship built to cruise through what looked like space, a species of fish that glowed, and a baby being cradled in the arms of his parents. Jack examined it more, and saw a familiar face–

_Nightlight?_

"I see you've found the glory of the Lunar Lamadary."

Jack jumped a little at the sound of Lunar's voice. He looked down at the older man, but the older man's gaze was still fixed on the instrument. Jack, deciding that staring was getting him nowhere, focused again on the images.

"This gong, as you can see, contains the story of the journey of the Moon Clipper," MiM told the winter spirit. "Or, more accurately, the story of how my parents and Nightlight tried to keep me safe from Pitch."

Jack nodded a little absently, now trying to find any sign of the Bogeyman on the carvings. He remembered when, about a few years after Maka Albarn restored the Guardians to the Earth, Katherine had decided to tell him that same story. Looking more into the images, he realized Katherine didn't have a reputation as the most reliable storyteller in the spirit world for nothing. She was spot-on with her descriptions, and her illustrations nearly flawless (though she had placed a lot more focus on Nightlight and MiM than the gong did). He realized that the two parents were Lunar's parents, and recalled what Katherine told him about what happened to them in the end. Now he knew why Lunar looked so despondent.

Jack was then reminded of that time in Antarctica, the little case of his baby teeth and the memories it contained: the resplendence of his childhood days, his little sister's smile, his mother's warmth, and then the sensation of falling through the ice.

"Must be strange," the winter spirit said as he finally realized the similarity of that incident in Antarctica five hundred years ago and of the one he was witnessing now, "looking at everything you once had, and then realizing you don't have it anymore."

"It is strange, Jack." MiM agreed. "Very...strange."

Jack looked down at him and was mildly surprised to see that now Lunar was meeting his eyes. If someone saw them now, Jack thought, they would see that there was an immense sadness upon them.

_Wait, how did I get so poetic?_

"I'm sorry, Jack," MiM looked down to his feet. "This is all my fault."

"Your parents wanted to protect you...that-that's not really your fault."

"Not that." MiM swallowed and looked back up to Jack. "I got the Guardians into this mess, I let my own fear go unchecked, and I caused one of my good friends to fall into madness." He crossed his arms, holding his moon-staff tightly. "If I hadn't chased her off that time, if I had listened to her, things might have been different."

Jack didn't really know what MiM had been referring to by "that time", but it must have been something significant enough for him to consider it so. He was about to say something but before he could open his mouth, the other man continued, "I mean, you must be wondering, why am I telling you all this? I must have not wanted to talk to you five hundred years ago, so why am I talking to you as if nothing happened?"

"Something _did_ happen." Jack firmly cut him off. "Isn't that why you're talking in the first place?"

MiM pursed his lips, but kept silent. Jack exhaled, looked around the room, and then looked back to the other man. "Remember, when we last met – with Pitch and all that..." he said with some discomfort, but went on, " you said you wanted me to hear what you have to say?"*****

Lunar nodded.

"These past few hours, I didn't really want to say anything to you that wasn't mean...I still don't know if that's really me or just the Fearling inside me." Jack could clearly see they were both uncomfortable dealing with the reminder of the shadow in his bloodstream, but nevertheless he pressed on. "But I talked to someone, and she told me, maybe I've been going about this all wrong. Maybe I should accept you're here." He took a deep breath, and concluded, "So I'm listening."

The smallest of smiles appeared on MiM's face, and even then he lowered his head so that Jack wouldn't see. "I don't-I don't know what to say, Jack."

"Yeah. I know." Jack tried to keep himself from smiling – the suspicion about MiM being involved somehow in WiS's plans wasn't truly gone – but it wasn't to be helped.

He ran a hand over the large gong beside him, and read its images once more. "Seems they've really put a lot of things into detail here," he said, trying to change the topic because _what should I do with all these emotions?_

"There was one thing they didn't put there," Lunar looked back to the instrument. "For some reason they didn't put Lady Solar's part of the story. She was there on the Moon Clipper for almost the whole trip. She was there because Pitch had exterminated her home and she and her caretaker had nowhere to go. And when the Moon Clipper exploded, she and her caretaker flew all the way to the Sun. That's how she became, quite literally, the Woman in the Sun."

Jack raised his eyebrows and put his lips together. So WiS and MiM _did_ have some history together. All the more reason for him to worry if MiM had something to do with WiS's current plan. He moved his staff from one hand to another, as he stared down at the man.

"I wonder what she wants with BREW," he said, somehow to himself; not even realizing that it had been loud enough for the other man to hear.

MiM looked up at Jack again. "If there's one thing I know about the Woman in the Sun, it's that she'll go to extreme and sometimes unnecessary lengths to get what she wants." He sighed. "BREW can be used for anything, so she must want it for something that's quite out of her reach."

"...Right." Jack glanced down to his feet, and then back to the gong. He didn't know what to say next. Suddenly, a voice broke through his thoughts.

"Jack!"

That was Tooth's voice, calling from outside the room. The other Guardians probably hadn't noticed that they had slipped into this room. Jack looked up at where the voice was coming from, and then to Lunar. "You can go, Jack," MiM said. "I'll catch up."

Jack nodded slowly, and then, without thinking about it too much, flew around the corner to the doorway. MiM watched him leave, still feeling a bit of sadness.

"Strange gong we have here."

Lunar's eyes widened. He knew that voice. He held his staff tighter, and stiffly turned around to greet the intruder.

"Funny, isn't it, how I'm not in it," Lady Solar continued, looking down at her old friend. "Then again, I'm not the Lunanoffs' heir."

"Did you really wait until Jackson was gone to make your entrance?" MiM asked, trying to smirk. WiS shrugged noncommittally. "You know him. Can't have him calling the attention of the Guardians on me." She narrowed her eyes, and smiled. "That's something I want to avoid. And," she bent down to his level, "that's something you probably won't do."

"What if I were to call them right now?" he asked. "You're not a hallucination." He grabbed her wrist to prove it – quite solid, and it wasn't vanishing any time soon. "They can attack you and take BREW back."

She frowned, and pulled her hand back. "_Would_ you?" she asked. Then she pulled out from her belt the metallic cube, and then stood straight up, holding it close to her face. "You don't know what I want."

"Do I need to know?"

"I'll tell you," she said, and turned BREW over in her hands. "Before I kill you."

* * *

"Jack! There you are!" Tooth said when Jack came back out. "I was beginning to think you had gotten lost or were in danger."

"I can take care of myself, Tooth, you know that," Jack flew up to the Guardians. "Find anything yet?"

"The airships the Lunar Lamas constructed are still here," Katherine told him. "I'm not sure if they work. It seems they just finished it by the time the Kishin Asura teamed up with Pitch." She put a hand to her chin. "They probably knew something bad was gonna happen to the Man in the Moon."

"Speakin' of which," Bunny looked around, "where is that bloke?"

Jack turned around. "He said he'd catch up," he said, a little quietly. His brow creased. He looked at the door which he had just exited from for a few seconds, and when no one stepped out in that span of time, he walked back to it.

"Jack? Where are you going?"

The winter spirit didn't reply. Instead, he crept back into the door, and around the corner. The Guardians followed after him, wondering what he was up to.

When Jack reached the giant gong, he stopped and stared. The Guardians came up to him, and stopped as well. After a moment, Nightlight ran forward and picked up the item that was lying on the ground – MiM's staff. Then he looked to the melted scratches on the gong, as if someone had written on it using a large soldering iron. The scratches read:

_Sorry, Guardians._

_But if you want BREW back, you can always come back up to the Moon._

_Signed, the Man in the Moon._


	11. Explaining

MiM woke up to find himself bound in chains. Once he had realized this, he narrowed his eyes and tried to make sense of where he was now.

His first note was that it was bone-chillingly cold where he was. Even colder than the Himalayas, and that was saying something. MiM's eyes tried to adjust to the darkness, which was his next clue. As he began to move, the chains that held him rattled on metal ground.

That was enough for MiM to realize where he was now.

A flame flickered in front of his face, and he was soon looking into the face of WiS. "It's fortunate for you that you're awake," she greeted with a sneer. "I was beginning to think that I'd have to burn your face off to get your attention." With that, the fire went out.

MiM frowned, and his brow creased as he tried to remember how he had gotten knocked out in the first place.

_Of course...after she declared she was going to kill me..._

His head hurt. _She probably clocked me on the head when I didn't see it coming._ He winced at the reminder, but then his eyes widened at a sudden realization: _My staff's not here. _He glanced around his surroundings, but sure enough, it was nowhere to be found.

"I'm sure you've guessed already where I've taken you," Lady Solar spoke again. MiM turned to her, trying to look composed. "Of course," he craned his neck to look her in the eye. "Just like old times."

"Well, I _was_ planning to defeat you and the Guardians on Earth, but since you wanted to go to the Moon anyway..." WiS shook her head and laughed. "No matter. You wanted me to tell you what I'm planning to do with the demon tool BREW."

"You bet your ass I do," MiM retorted.

His captor frowned. "You sounded..." she raised her eyebrow, "..._just like_ Spirit Albarn when you said that."

"You know the reason why."

"Good boy." Solar smiled again. "Now let me tell you my side of the story.

"So a hundred years ago, I was inside the North Pole with Katherine, Maka Albarn, and Soul Eater Evans. You read the records about that, right?" She breathed a laugh, then continued. "Anyway, I had just explained to them my...rather questionable actions in Death City that eventful week. Then I got to thinking..." she pointed at him. "If _your_ soul was just like _Spirit Albarn's_ soul, and _Maka's_ soul was also like _Nightlight's_ soul..."

MiM's stomach turned as her smile grew wider, like that of one who has realized they have won the lottery. WiS continued, "...Then that meant you and Nightlight had something to do with their births. Basic law – no two souls, no matter what small difference – could be _that_ alike. Maka said it herself.***** So you performed that spell, an old Golden Age spell..." she began to hyperventilate in excitement.

Lunar tensed. _Five hundred years ago, she would never have breathed like that..._

She finally got her lungs under control, and finished, "...You had used an old spell to save your and Nightlight's souls by putting their essences in two unborn babies' souls!"

Lunar stared up at her, and after 4 seconds, he looked down again. "_Many_ unborn babies' souls," he clarified. "For the generations after the Kishin was sealed away, Nightlight and I were there – reincarnating until finally reaching the Albarns."

"If that's so, then why didn't I notice that for 400 years?" WiS asked.

"You didn't really pay attention," MiM replied, and was rather pleased to see that Lady Solar couldn't keep a straight face on. He continued, "The one time you bothered to look was because of Pitch's return. And guess what? You found me in Spirit and Nightlight in Maka."

"...Point taken." WiS said after a long pause. Lunar found it in himself to lightly chuckle. "It's an emergency protocol. When any Guardian dies, we go through cycles of reincarnation until the rest of the Guardians regain full power and we are believed in again. We can't hold the beliefs of children without each other, after all; except maybe Nightlight, but I put the spell on him just the same."

"Then what happened when the Sandman died?"

"The Guardians quickly got their powers back; that's how Sandy returned without having to resort to sharing a soul. It just took longer with Nightlight and I because of 400 years of disbelief."

WiS made a sound like a cross between a laugh and a scoff. "You didn't think to tell me I should have done that for my Protectors."

"You didn't ask," he said simply.

Suddenly, Solar grabbed Lunar by his chin, and turned it upwards so that he had to look at her. "It. Could. Have. Saved. Them." she said coldly, then pushed him back. "Even if their human bodies died, thei souls would have simply gone off to be shared with any other unborn being."

"No, owning up to your mistakes would have saved them," MiM firmly told her. "And?" WiS held her hands out at her sides. "Is that what you're trying to do with Jack?"

The man stifled a growl at the winter spirit's name. "At least..._I_ can admit I've done something wrong."

"I _have_ admitted that!" WiS snapped harshly. "The thing about it is that I want everything to be back to the way that it was. When a child was the most powerful thing in the world, when the only things we had to worry about were Dark Spirits and not kishin eggs and my Protectors were alive!"

She panted from her outburst, and walked away, not facing him. Then she stopped, and he could tell that she was grinning. "Well, I want everything back to the way it was 500 years ago."

He watched as she sneered even wider, and pulled out BREW to look at it. "I think I have the perfect tool to use to make it happen..._to make everyone forget._"

MiM's mouth fell open. Before he could say anything else, WiS finished, "Oh, and thanks for teaching me how to write. Because of your efforts, I was able to write a...proper letter to your Guardians." She laughed, and then she was gone.

He lowered his head, trying to think of a way out of this, but all that he could think of was _what did she tell them?_

* * *

"I can't believe this," Jack breathed, stepping back, and then briskly walking over to a pillar before kicking it. "I can't believe this!"

"I can't believe it either." Bunny crossed his arms. "I mean, why would he even try to gain our trust if all he's gonna do is betray it?"

Jack leaned on his staff, nodding grimly. "Maybe I was right to be suspicious of him after all."

"But..." Katherine looked from the upset Guardians to the gong. She flew up to it, floating next to Nightlight as she examined the instrument as well. "There's gotta be some other explanation for what happened here. L-like the Woman in the Sun could have been here..."

Nightlight had the same pensive look on his face, only he was looking down and thinking. Finally he looked up to Katherine, and said in a whisper, "But no one really taught the Woman in the Sun how to write."

"So...you somehow think the Man in the Moon is really behind this?"

"Guys!" The Guardians looked up to acknowledge the person who called out – it was Tooth. Once they were all focused on her, she continued, "I know you're all upset about this. Of course. But it just means our enemy is different now. Our objective hasn't changed. We have to go to the Moon, find BREW there, and stop whatever it is they're gonna use BREW for."

After a pause of two seconds, North stood up. "Of course. Thank you, Tooth." He put a hand on her shoulder, and then turned to everyone else. "We might be upset about this message, but it's not like we can't handle it! We are still Guardians, and we have to protect this Earth from danger." With that, he turned to the storyteller. "Katherine! Where are the airships?"

"They're down the hall," Katherine said. "But I still don't know if they work; they were only for emergencies."

"Then let's go and find out, shall we?" North headed out of the room, with the Guardians following after him.

Jack was at the back of the line, trying to keep his feelings in check. _I should never have trusted him._

_**Maybe I should just kill him.**_

_Shut up._ The winter spirit closed his eyes, trying to block out the unnecessary thoughts. _I'm not going to become a murderer just because the Man in the Moon is teaming up with one._

**_I already am._ **The Fearling cackled. **_Remember the Bennetts?_**

Jack grabbed at his head, trying to keep the thoughts out. _Stop. Stop. Stop._ He breathed in and out, calming himself.

A hand tugged at the hem of his jacket. He looked down to see Sandy looking at him with a concerned face. The winter spirit finally eased, and then he put a hand on Sandy's head, ruffling the dream-giver's hair.

"Thanks, Sandy, I needed that."

The two of them followed the Guardians to the end of the hall. This led to a large room – almost like a large museum room housing ancient planes. Jack's mouth fell open in wonder. "Nice," he said to no one in particular. "Looks almost like it came out of a steampunk movie."

Sandy smiled up at him. Jack was beginning to sound like his old self again.

"Not really, mate," Bunny said in reply to Jack's statement. "Humans may've had a good idea of what the Constellations' ships looked like, but it's not really the same thing."

"We just need to find a small ship, one big enough for ze seven of us," North looked around. He mused quietly to himself, "Wasn't like old days, you could just ask for Lunar Moths..."

Tooth lifted herself higher, and flew around the room before spotting something. "Here!" she called from a few yards away. "This should be small enough."

The other Guardians came over to see an airship with large wings that made up for its small coach. They could see quite plainly that it was enough for them, and with that they quickly got on board.

Jack ran a hand over the ship's stardust-plated railing. "Can this really take us to the Moon?" the winter spirit asked his fellow Guardians. North smiled. "We will see."

He nodded to Sandy, who called forth a stream of dreamsand to use as the ship's fuel. It vanished into a small pipe in the center of the deck, and Jack nearly laughed as the ship thrummed into life.

* * *

**(A/N: * - WiS is referring to the thirteenth chapter of The First Guardian.**

**So sorry for the long hiatus. I honestly don't really like this part of The First Guardian AU anymore – seeing as I don't update it often – but I guess I ought to finish what I started.)**


	12. Realizing

**(A/N: Guess I didn't dislike this thing as much as I thought. Oh well. I hope this fixes some things for you guys. Or at least gives you worthwhile reading.)**

* * *

WiS wasn't surprised to see an old, Golden Age-styled airship coming towards the Moon from an area above India. She smiled – it was _obviously_ the Guardians – yet she didn't get up from her spot. Instead, she chose to keep sitting on the Moon's nose, and watch them get closer and closer.

She _could_ just burn them to death and get her scheme over with. But where was the fun in that?

No, wait. Burning them to death _would_ be fun.

Lady Solar lifted her staff, and then looked to BREW, which was just waiting to be activated. A loud laugh erupted from her lips.

* * *

In his mind's eye, he could see two souls on the Moon.

Nightlight opened his physical eyes, trying to keep the image in his mind. All eyes were on him; they were relying on this ability to sense souls. He had felt a little strange at first about having one of Maka's abilities – like he had stolen it – but in two decades' time he had come to terms with it, and so had the other Guardians.

"What did you see?" North asked. Nightlight raised two fingers, and then raised his hands as if carrying an invisible basketball.

"Two powerful souls?"

He nodded at Katherine's guess.

"Must be Lunar and Solar, then," Bunny inferred. "How're we gonna get past her?"

"The Woman in the Sun's attacks are largely dependent on fire magic," Tooth began to plan. "So Jack, you shouldn't go against her on your own, no matter what happens. Do you understand?" "Sure, being melted doesn't sound like a good way to pass the time," Jack replied.

Bunny's ears twitched at the comment. "Jack, now's not the time for any of your snide remarks. This is serious."

"Of course I know it's serious," the winter spirit shot back. "I'm just trying to lighten the mood a little." He put his hand up. "Why am I being coddled again?" This time the Pooka fully turned to him. "It's because like Solar, you rely mainly on your magic. Except that's no good against someone who uses fire." "So it's best that you don't take her on impulse," Tooth finished.

"Alright, but I'm warning you; don't expect me to stay on the sidelines," the winter spirit raised his eyebrows, remembering the last time he argued against not following their advice about 500 years ago. North found it in himself to laugh. "That's my boy!" he exclaimed, clapping a hand on Jack's shoulder.

As the other Guardians began discussing how to get past WiS, Jack found his eyes wandering to the yellow Moon, which grew larger and larger as the airship came closer and closer to it. He examined it, down to its missing tooth (_"Tooth would freak out if her back wasn't turned,"_ thought Jack), and then he turned his head and looked at the item which lay in the corner: Lunar's moon-staff. He stared at it, and then a thought occurred to him. The winter spirit crept closer to the moon-staff, keeping that thought in mind.

Katherine noticed him walk over to the moon-staff, and flew quietly to him. She watched as he leaned down and picked it up.

"...Jack?" she asked, and he jumped before turning and realizing that it was just the spectral girl. "Oh, uh..." he muttered. "I just thought...if the Man in the Moon wanted to betray us, then why did he leave his staff? I mean, that's his weapon, isn't it?"

Katherine pursed her lips. "I was considering that too. MiM–"

" 'MiM'?"

"It's short for 'Man in the Moon'."

"Oh. Okay."

The spectral girl continued, "MiM doesn't really have any magic powers of his own, unlike the Woman in the Sun. I mean, even five hundred years ago, a lot of the magic that he _does_ use is something you'd find in a spellbook."

The thought of using a spellbook's text to revive the dead was a strange one, but Jack let it pass. Because for now, that was all he needed to hear.

A flash of heat rocked the ship, bringing the Guardians to the floor of the ship. What was probably a horn sounded in alarm, and Jack noticed that the ship was getting hotter.

North crawled back up to the control panel, and that was when he saw it. Fireballs hurtling from the Moon down onto the airship. The source was soon made obvious by a high-pitched feminine laugh.

"Crikey!" Bunny exclaimed, jumping up to the controls. "The sheila's seen us!" The Pooka twisted a dial and reached for the co-pilot's wheel, turning the ship towards the other side of the Moon. North came to his senses and jumped at the controls as well to steer the airship away from the threat.

"Uh, Bunny, what's that alarm?" Tooth asked, referring to the horn. "It means we've been hit," Bunnymund said in a grave voice. "Someone go out there and check the damage!"

Sandy raised a hand in volunteer, while Tooth declared, "We'll do it!" Then the two of them rushed to the exit.

"Are they going to be alright?!" Jack asked, remembering the "cold vacuum of space" information he had heard centuries ago. "Don't worry about it," North reassured him. "If Shibusen students can breathe on the Moon, then Tooth and Sandy can take care of themselves out there. The Moon isn't as far from Earth as it was five hundred years ago."

The exit hatch opened, and the smell of smoke greeted their noses. Jack and Sandy started to cough, while Tooth tried to wave it away. When Tooth opened her eyes, she saw that a part of the airship's roof was already on fire. She turned to Sandy. "Sandy! I need some help over here!" she called. Sandy snapped out of his thoughts – of cackling Fearlings and a girl's voice screaming _what are we going to do_ – and went immediately to help his friend.

More fireballs rained in the pilots' lines of vision, and they tried desperately to dodge them. Katherine looked over to Jack, who was holding on to both his own staff and the moon-staff. Seeing the latter gave the spectral girl an idea.

"Jack!" she yelled over the noise. "Give me the Man in the Moon's staff!"

The winter spirit opened his eyes, then looked to Katherine, and then to the hand which held said staff. With a bit of effort, he moved his right arm to give the moon-staff over to her. She reached out with her own right arm and grabbed it.

"What're you gonna do with that?" Jack asked.

"Something ridiculous," Katherine told him. Unsteadily, she got to her feet. She turned towards the open hatch, and Jack's eyes widened as he realized what she was going to do.

"Wait! It's not safe out there, Katherine!" he exclaimed. Yet the spectral girl continued to walk towards the exit. "Jack, I'll be alright," she said. Then she turned to the boy beside Jack. "Nightlight, where did you see MiM?" Nightlight, trying to hold on to a pipe in the wall, pointed to his nose.

Katherine nodded. "Right. I'll be back."

With that, the spectral girl jumped out of the hatch. Jack moved to stop her, but then Nightlight held out an arm to block his way. He gave the winter spirit a firm look. _Katherine will be okay._

North had glanced at the scene behind him, but then turned his head back towards the controls. He knew Katherine was just like him; stubborn to the very end. He watched her glowing form pass from under the airship to the Moon, wondering what she was up to.

* * *

Lord Death looked down at the Book of Eibon for the second time that day. He was sure it wouldn't go onto the library shelves anytime soon; who knew how much havoc it could wreak in the wrong hands. Maybe the space underneath the school would do, considering it was now being used solely for top secret archives and memorials.

However, a strange pull from the Book kept him from finalizing that decision. It was almost as if it wanted to be in the possession of the Grim Reaper himself. Yet Lord Death knew that it was unsafe for him to keep it in a place that wasn't always under maximum security. So here he was, staring at the old scorched book which lay on his dinner table.

He looked up at the empty seats in front of him. Oh, this choice would have been much easier to make with his old friends by his side. But a hundred years had passed. And his friends never really lasted forever. One by one, they had died off, and every time that happened, they felt a little more incomplete.

The first to go was Maka's father; she had cried rivers of tears at the funeral and not even Soul could fully comfort her that day. In the very end, even Black*Star had to leave, and Lord Death actually wasn't sure where his soul went. Maybe he had gone to a higher plane of existence, like he said. He had told the reaper that_ I'm okay, I'm just shedding my mortal body._

Lord Death wanted to find this god version of Black*Star and prove that it was true. A familiar face would be nice.

What a hundred years would do to a person who lived forever.

Maybe that was the real "pull" of the Book. The chance that Crona was alright in there was, admittedly, too enticing a chance to pass up.

_No._ He shook his head. He knew the horrors that lay inside of the Book. In fact, he had been lucky to get out the one time he was trapped with its previous owner; and that was before this book held the very embodiment of the Madness of Fear itself. If he even opened it – if something bad happened because of his sentiment, then he could never live with himself.

That was it. He was going to put this book away. No matter how much he missed his friends, he wasn't going to risk the fate of the world for one of them.

Having made up his mind, Lord Death stood up and tucked the Book of Eibon under his arm. This was going straight to the archives.

He went outside the building, locked the gates, and flipped his mask over his face before summoning his skateboard. (He had never really outgrown Beelzebub, no matter what he would say.) Hopping on it, he sped towards Shibusen as fast as he could. On his way, he happened to look at the Moon, and saw bright sparks fly from its surface.

"...What's going on up there?"

* * *

**(A/N: Alright, so I might put this on another hiatus. Depends on how soon I want to wrap up the action.)**


	13. Saving

**(A/N: Sorry if this took so long! The chapter after this will be good, I promise. Or the chapter after that. Either way, a fight's about to blow out, I can guarantee it.)**

**Disclaimer: I wrote this AU before the fourth Guardians of Childhood novel came out.**

* * *

MiM looked up from the ground as he heard fire rain from the Moon. His mind started working again after being stuck for so long. The first thing it went to was, _why would Lady Solar be throwing fire around?_ The instant answer to this was that _there are opponents of hers coming to the Moon_.

But who else would be opponents of the Woman in the Sun except...?

Of course. The Guardians had arrived.

He wanted to crack a smile – _they had made it after all_ – but couldn't. Not after all that had happened.

_What if they didn't make it to him?_

_What if they didn't make it on the Moon at all?_

No use looking up now. All that was in front of him was darkness.

Lunar looked back down to his knees. He moved his feet a little, and wondered if he could get up. This time he tried moving a leg forward, and then with some effort, he managed to get his right knee up to his chest, with his right foot level on the ground.

Grunting now, he began to push himself up, hoping that he could do it without the use of his chained hands. His legs felt so numb...

A light shined in front of him. MiM looked up once more – and there it was, the source of the light at the far end of the cave.

Katherine.

The spectral girl was holding his staff, he noticed as she flew deeper into the cave towards him. She was about three feet away from him when she stopped.

They stared at each other for a little while, not speaking. Well, what _could_ they say to each other?

"...You're really not with her." It wasn't exactly a question, but it was aimed at him all the same.

"Of course I'm not with her," Lunar raised an eyebrow. "Who do you think I've been against all this time?" Was that really what Solar had written? Well, it was sort of a good plan. It would have confused the Guardians enough. And yet, it didn't exactly surprise him that they had come as soon as they could.

"Alright, then," Katherine said, aiming the moon-staff at MiM's chains. "Hold still, I'm getting you out of here."

* * *

"Is the thing fixed yet?!" Bunny asked, peering out of the hatch. Tooth looked down at him, her eyebrows creased and her jaws pressed together.

"Just give us a minute!" She turned back to the damaged wiring in front of her.

"Well, hurry it up; at this rate we're gonna crash!"

Tooth looked up to Sandy, who was busy trying to rewire everything. For someone who came up to help, she actually felt quite useless; this was far beyond her knowledge. She wished there was something simple that she _could_ do in this situation, but it seemed this was just a one-man job after all.

She nearly screamed as a fireball came hurtling their way, narrowly missing her wings and instead blowing the panel off another part of the airship. Tooth looked at Sandy, and knew that if he could curse in that moment, he would.

The dreamweaver stared at the spectacle in front of them for a little while, before he shook his head and tried to put his hands back to the wiring in front of him. Did Sandy think it was nothing to worry about? Probably. Tooth gritted her teeth together, and bent just a little to try and look into the hatch.

North was frantically pulling at the steering, trying to find some kind of path that took their little airship out of the Woman in the Sun's mad attacks, but that was virtually impossible now. Bunny was scanning the buttons on the control panel, probably checking for a button that could activate a shield, or some other kind of thing that would help in this situation.

As for Jack and Nightlight, the two boys were trying to hold on for dear life. The winter spirit's fingers were wound tight around his staff, knuckles turned even whiter than she had ever seen them. Nightlight, on the other hand, raised his head with a rather defiant look on his face.

Defiant towards the attacks raining down on them. It was as if he was fully convinced that help would come to them.

_But what good would that defiant look do? One more hit and we both go down._

Just as Tooth's eyes told her that _Katherine's not with them_, something rocked the ship immensely, throwing her into the hatch and landing her onto the floor, feeling her head _thunk_ against the cold metal.

_Speak of the devil._

* * *

Finally, the airship was certainly going down. Lady Solar couldn't even bite back a giddy grin at this point. Those people who were going down, her enemies, they would crash and burn – and if they just crashed onto the Moon's surface alive, well, she would take care of the burn part herself.

She skimmed across the Moon's surface, her flames carrying her, towards the place where the Guardians would fall.

_Time to end this, once and for all._

The airship hit the Moon with the metallic screech of the Titanic when it hit that iceberg – as the earthly ship sunk into the deep icy waters, so the Guardians were going to sink into WiS's flaming hell.

* * *

The sound couldn't go unnoticed from where Katherine and MiM were.

They had just run out of the nostril of the Moon when a horrible metallic sound reached their ears.

Instinctively, the spectral girl turned around, to where the sound had no doubt come from.

"That sounded like..."

Lunar grabbed her hand, making her look back at him. "We have to act fast, Katherine. After all, there's only one way to find out."

Katherine glanced back, and pursed her lips. "I just hope nothing happened to the others," she said as she followed after MiM towards the crash site – not a very long ways from where they had been because of the new shape of the Moon.

"Believe me – they've been through worse." MiM tried to reassure her – if "reassure" was the proper word for it – though inwardly, he felt the same sense of dread as she did.

* * *

Jack grunted, and opened his closed eyes. The first thing he was aware of was smoke floating out of the control panel. The next thing he was aware of was his wooden staff in his hand, and he held it tight as he pushed himself up.

Movement behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see that it was Bunny, moving the chair off himself. " Are 'ya alright?" Bunny asked. Jack turned around, and saw Tooth lying unconscious by the controls, with one of her wings crumpled and her head on the control table.

Of course, the automatic assumption would be that the Guardian of Memory had been knocked on the head, so the first response of Bunny and Jack was to try and help her up. As they did so, North and Nightlight began to come to as well, and then realized what the alarm was.

Meanwhile, the Sandman, who had been pushed off the roof of the airship when it crashed, was now struggling to get up from under a dislodged panel. He mustered all the dreamsand he could, in an effort to make a small cushion on his back. He pushed himself up with his small arms and even smaller legs, hoping that these combined efforts would eventually push the metal off him.

Just when he thought he was finally making progress, though, footsteps came from in front of him.

_Oh, no._

"Well, if it isn't the Guardian of Dreams!" Lady Solar came to a halt a foot directly in front of him. "The rest of your friends in the wreck too?"

Sandy moved his hands further under him. He looked up at her, and narrowed his eyes.

WiS's smile faltered, and she moved the end of her staff down onto the surface of the Moon. "I probably shouldn't be s surprised you won't speak to me, no matter how rude it seems," she said, coming closer and putting a foot on the panel over his back. "After all, when you're speaking you'd rather be dreaming."

She pushed down, and immediately the Sandman felt the weight of the stardust metal come crashing down on him. He fell face-first into the dust, taking a good deal of it into his mouth. It took him some effort to look up to the woman again, and this time around he assumed her wild smile was back because of the dirt caked onto his face.

"But there's no time for dreaming, is there, Sanderson?" she asked, tilting her head.

Lady Solar swung her sun-staff down onto the panel, and Sandy nearly choked on the extra weight. "Where's your little Starlight, huh?" she questioned him. "I saw her fly away. If you were paying attention, you would probably know where she went. Either that, or you were sleeping on the job. One or the other, you know?"

Sandy coughed, hoping that the other Guardians could get themselves out of the wreckage.

A second later, the hatch of the broken ship froze over, showing signs of life – and then it was kicked open by a rabbit's foot.

Jack and Bunny came out first, with North and Nightlight the next to come out, supporting Tooth whose arms were around their shoulders. The other Guardians scanned their surroundings, trying to make sense of all the fire and steel scattered around the Moon – and then they saw WiS standing there, with a foot and a staff on top of their comrade.

"What a party," WiS crooned, lifting her sun-staff from the steel panel and giving Sandy a little room to breathe. "Did you miss me?"

She stepped off from Sandy, and spread her arms around her. "Like what you see?" WiS asked, gesturing with her open palm to the view of the Earth from the Moon. "Don't worry; after I'm finished with the Earth, it'll look better; for me, at least. But first," she pointed her staff at them, "I'll have to finish you. You've been such a thorn in my side for so long."

"Half a week is long?" Jack joked, pointing his own staff at her. "We must be living on different calendars!"

WiS rolled her eyes. "Now that you're here, anyway, it's time for you to meet the family." She clasped her hands together, with her staff in between them, and then pointed the staff downwards so that bursts of fire came out from its end. The flames grew and grew, until they reached certain heights, at which they morphed into shapes of beings – former spirits.

The Protectors.

"Family," WiS ordered the flaming figures, "be nice to our little guests."

* * *

**(A/N: Next chapter coming up as soon as possible. Which is gonna be...later than you'd expect.)**


	14. Fighting

**(A/N: After an almost year-long hiatus, I've finally managed to cobble something together! To the people who have loyally followed this fanfic (if there are any), I am terribly sorry about that. To be honest, I've begun to lose interest in this fanfic, with the main suspects being Reverse Falls, The Resolute, and many other things you can see on my tumblr. But true to the title, I will do my best to finish this and leave you readers even a little satisfied.)**

* * *

Lord Death would have tried to investigate on what was happening on the Moon, if not for the book that he had to take care of first. So he went on to the Academy, up the stairs and into the deepest chambers of Shibusen.

He rode his skateboard all the way down, feeling the ache of nostalgia once more as his eyes wandered around the room.

_This was the place where we sped past the arrows of the witch Medusa..._

_This was the place where Black*Star and I faced off against that werewolf..._

He gripped the book hard, the desire to open it to try and find a friend quite overwhelming now.

On to the archives.

* * *

The fire soldiers that Lady Solar had assembled for herself poised themselves to strike, and Jack shuddered – _people made of fire, going after ice, oh no I'm gonna die_ – and then they struck.

North took on the one with the scythe first, grabbing his swords and slashing at the fire being. Only a second into the battle did he realize he should have remembered that his swords were made of metal, and could melt around fire as hot as this – but for some reason, no matter how hot the blades became, they didn't melt.

_Ah, thank Lord Death._

Tooth's head was still spinning as she faced off against another fire figure that was shooting fire at her (for some reason, they seemed to be shaped like arrows). She yelped as one came close to burning her wing – this was _not _the strategy they were prepared for.

_Come on, Tooth! Think!_

Sandy tried fighting to the best of his ability, but his sturdy whips were no use against this figure who used a flaming sword. His dreamsand turned to glass in an instant, which fell to the Moon's surface and broke into tiny pieces.

To his panic, the figure began to parry at him with the flaming sword, and he had to dodge as quickly as he could on his little legs, a feat given his size. This he couldn't block with his dreamsand whips, and so he threw balls of golden sand at the figure to try and hinder them, trying not to flinch every time the sand melted and fell to the ground.

Bunny himself was faring no better, trying to figure out how to attack the flaming soldier before him without burning up his wooden boomerangs. He remembered how at home he was still working on a prototype of metal boomerangs that would be light enough to fly, and for a moment he absently wondered if stardust would be the metal he was looking for.

But then a fireball coming from the figure in front of him was enough to bring him back to reality, and he would remember to strategize against this curious opponent once again.

_Stardust, stardust...of course!_

Bunny turned on his paw and ran as fast as he could towards a small fallen panel of the airship, and lifted it up with some effort before turning towards the flaming figure that was coming towards him, and whacking it away like a ping-pong ball.

Stardust, coming from actual stars, had a ridiculously high melting point – one that would amaze the scientists on Earth. And Bunny quickly calculated that Lady Solar, on her own, couldn't generate enough of that heat, even with flaming soldiers.

"Come and get this!" the Pooka taunted the figure in front of him.

Jack and Nightlight were having the hardest time of all – the latter didn't have any noticeable powers anymore (as Katherine had them now), and the former seriously doubted his ice powers would have any effect on the flaming figure coming after him; sure, it was the smallest of the soldiers WiS made, but Jack had learned to not judge a spirit by their size a long time ago.

The figure was now shooting fire at him the same way his staff shot out frosty lightning. Jack created a shield of ice to defend himself as well as Nightlight, and both of them ran as the barrier melted into water before them.

"Just where do you think you're going?" WiS asked, and pointed her staff at him. The small figure, taking this as a command, moved towards Jack and Nightlight, creating its own staff out of fire, and aiming this staff at them.

(Jack could have sworn that that staff looked familiar – maybe he had seen it somewhere before.)

Out of this staff shot more beams of fire at him. Jack shot blue lightning right back at it, and to his surprise, his attack was holding up for more than seven seconds before the two beams canceled each other out.

Nightlight had ducked behind Jack just as this was taking place, and now he was straightening up and looking at the battle all around him. By now Tooth and Sandy had noticed what Bunny was using as a strategy, and were taking up pieces of the fallen ship as weapons. In fact, Tooth was doing quite well with wielding two busted pipes, and was now beginning to attack the flaming figure that she was up against. Meanwhile, Sandy was beginning to close in on his own opponent using a chunk of the control panel as a shield.

Nightlight then wished that he could help the other Guardians in any way. If he hadn't given up much of his powers after all those years of reincarnating, and also learned more combat magic...

The sound of crackling fire coming towards him reached his ears, and he ducked just in time to avoid something made of fire flying overhead. His eyes turned to the skyline, and he saw a shape of fire above him, turning around in mid-air to get back to him.

(It was shaped like a bird – and Nightlight felt a pang.)

Jack had noticed the fire-bird as well, and moved to protect Nightlight from it, shooting ice at it. The fire-bird was thrown back with a hiss, and became off-balance as a result.

In doing this, however, he had lost sight of his own opponent.

The winter spirit only realized this when he had a few fireballs to the shoulder, and he was knocked to the ground. He howled in pain, and Nightlight bent down to help him.

"Jack!" Nightlight couldn't help but say, examining the burn that had seared through Jack's clothes and into his skin. Jack winced, and looked at the red angry wound. He stared for a while, and cursed under his breath before they both heard the screech of the fire-bird, and saw Tooth's wings being burned by a fire-blast coming from the fire-bird. She screamed, just as something warm came close to them, and they looked back to see Jack's opponent, pointing its staff at him.

It was about to strike a blow on them, and Nightlight lowered his head–

–but out of nowhere, a diamond dagger flew through the air and right through the flaming figure before them, dissolving the flames and wedging itself into the ground right before them.

North, Sandy, Bunny, and Tooth looked up at Jack and Nightlight's savior, and Lady Solar looked on with a scowl.

* * *

The archives of Shibusen were dangerously close to the room where the Kishin was once kept. Adding that to the presence of the Kishin himself inside the book he was carrying, he now felt the madness more intensely than before.

And he wanted to open the Book of Eibon so badly. He wanted to see Crona...

Lord Death slapped a hand against his head. _Stupid, stupid._ He had to get this damned book away from him before anything bad happened, and seal it away in a container.

He was making his way to the container, when something in the air above him _moved_, and he turned his head up sharply.

_Something big is going to happen._

_Two magical tools, too close to each other._

By perhaps a weakening of his finger joints, Kid let go of the Book of Eibon – and it fell open.

The pages of the book lit up with magic that hadn't been accessed in a long time, and Kid stepped back, remembering being trapped in that thing – but instead of sucking something in, the book spat something out.

It was a figure that made Kid's mouth fall open in shock.

* * *

"Lady Solar," the Man in the Moon said, pointing his moon-staff towards the Woman in the Sun. "You should've stayed away from my guardians when you had the chance."

Meanwhile Katherine floated forward, taking a fighting stance. "And now I hope you're ready for a real fight," she added, thrusting her fist into her open palm.

* * *

**(A/N: The end is coming in a few chapters! Reviews would be much appreciated.)**


	15. Whispering

"Family," Lady Solar said in a low voice, snapping her fingers. The fire figures stopped attacking, and looked up. MiM pressed his lips together, yet tightened his hold on his moon-staff and stood his ground.

"We have two unexpected visitors," she continued. "Would you mind showing them what we have in store?"

At this, Nightlight bent down and grabbed the diamond dagger from the ground. He took it up in his hands, and then yelled out, "Starlight!" as he threw it straight through the air at Katherine. She caught it by the handle just as the tip of the blade was about to scratch her nose, and then she turned it towards the flaming figures and swiped at the scythe-wielding one, dissolving it.

"We have to help them!" Tooth called out, and the rest of the Guardians came towards the battle, going up against the flaming figures once more.

Jack was running there, when he noticed Lady Solar grinning at the spectacle, and then turning away, running off.

"She's getting away!" the winter spirit exclaimed, and he guessed that he shouldn't be surprised that Lunar was the one to jump at the call and accompany him in apprehending WiS.

Jack and MiM ran after WiS, and once they were a considerable distance from the other Guardians, WiS turned on her heel and pointed her staff at them.

"Stay back!" she called out, and the tip of her staff lit up with fire. "You know, I could just activate the magic tool BREW, and annihilate you at this very moment. Do you really want the children of the Earth to go without your protection against the monsters of the darkness? And what about the remaining spirits who still belong to the shadows, even after Pitch Black is dead and gone?"

Walking closer to them, WiS took BREW from her belt, holding it up. She continued, "I can show you a world where all your mistakes are changed. In fact, a world where you never made your mistakes, and nothing hurts." Here she looked straight at Jack. "This is a powerful magic tool; I think I might even be able to bring back Jamie and Sophie Bennett, if only for one more day."

At the mention of their names, Jack paused. The Fearling which had sat long dormant before was now poking at his chest.

But Lunar stepped forward, and pointed his moon-staff right at hers.

"Fixing the past won't change the fact that things go wrong. We just accept what happened, whether it was our fault or not, and move on." His eyes turned towards Jack for only a second, but in that second the latter could see infinite sadness – and yet, infinite hope.

Then MiM smirked. "And besides, if you really wanted the people of Earth to be guarded from the darkness, then you wouldn't have killed off the Protectors in order to keep your dirty little secret from them."

This remark had the expected reaction: WiS swung her sun-staff back, and then swiped right at them, blowing a wave of fire their way. Jack and MiM jumped back, steadying themselves with their staffs.

"I get the drill – we don't let her use BREW, right?" The winter spirit had to smile in MiM's direction.

Lunar smiled as well, though he wasn't looking at Jack. "That, and give her hell."

The two of them ran forward, brandishing their weapons, and then Jack thrust his staff forward to deliver a blast of ice at her. Lady Solar blocked with a wall of fire, and then jumped at him, one hand reaching for the magic tool at her belt.

"No, you don't!" MiM called out. He moved his staff forward to push BREW out of her belt, causing it to fall to the ground. Before WiS could react to that, Lunar swung his staff back, and whacked WiS across the face, leaving a nasty bruise.

"Jack, freeze BREW now!" he commanded, looking at Jack, who jumped up and landed down right in front of BREW. He held up his staff, ready to–

_**Jack.**_

It was the Fearling.

_**Jack, use the magic tool.**_

_What? No. No._

_**You can do anything with it. You can even kill her – she's the reason Jamie's dead! She's the reason the Guardians disappeared for 400 years!**_

_I can't – I can't–_

"Oh, looks like your little Frost isn't doing so well," WiS said, getting to her feet and rubbing the bruise on her cheek.

Jack grabbed at his head, screaming. The other Guardians looked up, first in shock, and then in concern.

"Jack!" Bunny called out, and that was when the flaming being he was fighting took him by surprise. A singed pair of ears and a burned back was the result of that.

"Jack, snap out of it!" Katherine said, fending off the flaming bird she was battling. She looked towards the winter spirit and wished that she could go to him, but then the bird swooped over her head and she threw the diamond dagger at it. It only hit the bird's wing, which reformed just as soon as it was dissolved.

WiS sneered at Jack's weakness, and then ran towards him, getting the magic tool back from the ground.

_**You pitiful fool,**_ the Fearling whispered as Jack looked up and saw WiS beginning to activate BREW.

"NO!"

Lunar lunged forward and thrust his staff forward, the tip passing into the keyhole-like hollow in BREW's side.

Something clicked, and WiS's eyes widened.

"Oh."

* * *

Lord Death's – no, Kid's knees weakened, yet he forced himself to continue standing. His face relaxed altogether, and his jaw dropped.

"Crona," he said.

Indeed it was – Crona with the pink hair and the contemplative dark eyes that Katherine had drawn. There was a new third eye on Crona's forehead that reminded Kid of the Kishin, as well as a cloak of black blood surrounding Crona's body and leaving only whatever was above the shoulders visible – but other than that, it was the same person Kid had known, from a hundred years ago.

And now Lord Death was at a loss for words.

Crona looked about them, and uttered, "Where's Maka?"

"Maka?" At the sound of the name, a fresh wave of pain ran through Kid. "Crona, Maka is..."

"I felt her soul wavelength," Crona said, a hand covered in black blood appearing from the cloak and touching their chest. "She was so close to me...where am I?"

"Crona...we're in Shibusen's basement. You-you're not on the moon anymore." Kid felt himself turning a little paler than he already was. Crona looked him over, and noticed his mature features, as well as the mask tilted to the side of his own black cloak.

"L-Lord Death?" Crona shifted uncomfortably. "You...you look just like Kid..."

"I _am_ Kid," the reaper said gently, beginning to step closer and putting up his hands in capitulation. "Crona – you've been on the Moon for a long time."

"...What do you mean?" Fear pricked at Crona, and the madness wavelength in the room intensified. Kid winced.

But he had to say it.

"Crona...Maka's dead."

* * *

"So that's what you were getting at!" WiS exclaimed, kicking MiM to the dirt. "I always thought that was a dead stick, sure, but now..." She pointed her staff at his eye. "...this is getting fun."

"HANDS OFF HIM!" Katherine yelled, flying away from Nightlight and towards WiS, holding up the dagger. But Solar was quicker and pointed her staff at the spectral girl, shooting a beam of fire at her and knocking her off-course.

"Katherine!" Nightlight exclaimed, but then one of the fire figures moved up to him, and before he knew it, a large burn was etched on his back.

MiM's eyes darted towards Nightlight, who was being helped up by Tooth who had dropped her shield to aid him. Footsteps came towards him, and he looked back to see WiS with BREW still in her hands, a maniacal smile on her face.

"Are you alright?" Jack asked, running to Katherine's side and placing a cold hand on her belly. "Ow," she said, and Jack winced. "Sorry," he said.

Katherine shook her head, but didn't get the chance to reply as something started to glow in front of them, and she paled.

The demonic tool was starting to glow.

BREW was finally activating.

* * *

"I...I don't understand."

Kid looked sadly at Crona. The madness wavelength grew ever stronger – though now he realized that his own insanity was spreading across the room as well.

"Maka's gone, Crona...she has been for some time."

Crona moved back, and the sole hand that had come out of the black blood covered their mouth. The wavelength trembled.

"No...Maka?" Crona shook their head. "It can't be. Maka...Maka wouldn't leave. Not like that."

Kid felt a thousand years older when he heard those words. What could he say?

"Crona, I...I wish she was still alive, as much as you do. But it's been a hundred years since you sealed–"

"A hundred years? But...I felt Maka's soul wavelength!" Crona cried. "This is all a joke, right? You must know that I can't deal with jokes like this, Kid!"

A deep, painful silence held them, before Kid lowered his head, and shook it. "Everyone's gone, Crona. I'm the only one left."

"No."

The madness wavelength thrummed in the air, even stronger than before.

"That can't be. That can't..." Crona's eyes welled up with tears. "Whose soul did I feel, then?"

"It was a different person, Crona. His soul wavelength was similar to Maka's."

For a moment, Kid thought that Crona was going to do something bad, like spread more madness around or accidentally let the Kishin or the black blood loose. But all Crona did was cover their face with their hands and weep.

And all Kid did was watch them weep.

* * *

"Finally! It's finally happening!"

WiS couldn't help but laugh. Now the time of her victory was drawing near.

Jack got up from his spot next to Katherine, and pointed his staff at WiS.

"Jack, what're you–" Katherine tried to ask, but she was cut short by Jack running as fast as he could towards Lady Solar, his teeth grit together and his fingers wrapped tight around his staff. Once he was close enough, he jumped up, and shot a beam of blue lightning at WiS.

A shield of fire suddenly popped up from out of the magic tool, and the heat that it generated was enough to repel Jack's own magic.

"You think you can defeat me?" WiS asked, blowing fire in his direction and knocking him out of position, leaving a nasty burn on the skin below his shirt. He fell to the ground, and WiS came over to him silently, dragging her sun-staff behind her.

Jack tried to get up, but was reduced to looking up at her when she smiled down at him. She swung her sun-staff next to him, and tossed up his staff to her hand with it.

Sneering down at him, she snapped it in half.

Jack screamed.

"No!" Tooth cried out as fire began to come out from WiS's hands and burn the two halves of Jack's staff. This caused him to cry out more in pain, and he swore he could feel even the Fearling shouting with him.

"Did you really think that you could defeat me?" WiS asked as the staff was reduced to charred bits under the fire's power. "Ice against fire. Guardians against the Woman in the Sun."

Once she was done burning the staff, she wiped her hands of any black bits of burned wood that was stuck on her palms. "Well, that's over with," she said, taking BREW with her, ready to strike the defining blow. "Any more questions?"

"Yes."

MiM threw his moon-staff to Jack's feet, and Jack couldn't help but stare at Lunar, _what the heck are you doing?! Stop!_

But MiM only walked towards Lady Solar without any fear in his eyes or movements, the only sign of something happening inside his mind being a change in the light of his ocean blue eyes.

He stopped too close to WiS – and for some reason, she decided to let him. But who could blame her? She was so close to victory, so she might as well hear the loser's last words.

Lunar looked Solar straight in the eye, and she looked at him as well.

Then he whispered: "I thought you were supposed to love me?"

Her eyes widened.

And then he did the unthinkable–

–he took her free hand in his, and pulled her down to kiss her.

The Guardians stood there in shocked silence. So did Lady Solar, as she dropped her sun-staff while Jack tried to get to his feet. His hand brushed against the moon-staff, and it frosted up like his staff. The winter spirit noticed this, and reached down to grab the moon-staff.

_Exactly like my staff._

The Fearling protested against him touching it, but this time he was able to push it out of his mind. He looked up when a small smacking sound he heard, and MiM pulled away from WiS.

"Jack," MiM said, loud enough for Jack to hear, "lock BREW now."

At that moment, Bloody Mary's words came back into his mind.

"_Frost, it can lock the demon tool back into place."_

_The Man in the Moon's staff, of course!_

Realizing what MiM had just said, Lady Solar cried out, "No!" and tried to stop Jack, but Lunar's hold on her was still firm, and she could only watch as Jack charged forward and plunged the tip of the moon-staff into the keyhole-like hole in the unlocked BREW.

It went in, and the demon tool froze over before it took over their surroundings with a great glow.

* * *

**(A/N: I don't even know if I'm writing it accurately anymore. Please leave a review if you want, so I can get things right.)**


	16. Ending

The immense light faded.

Between the clouds of moon dust, Tsar Lunar could see a faint shadow. He was quite close, so he only had to take a few steps to find out who it truly was. And there was no mistaking that tall stature, or that long golden hair.

Lady Solar had sunk to her knees as she watched her plans fail, the demon tool BREW now sitting a stone's throw away. She could just reach over and grab it – but why didn't she?

"...In response to your question, Lunar..." WiS said silently. She didn't turn to face him, so MiM contented himself with staring at the back of her head. "...I wanted to love you."

MiM pressed his mouth into a thin line, trying to decide what to say, before he found the words.

"...Me too, Solar," he finally said. "I wanted to love you as well."

She tried to smile. "Aren't our wishes granted, then?"

"Not like this." The reply was instant.

WiS sighed. "I was supposed to worry about you, you know," she said sadly. "I was supposed to worry."

"I know," MiM said gently. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she said as the clouds finally settled, and she saw the Guardians circled around her. "I got what I deserved."

"It's over, Lady Solar," Katherine said, picking up BREW. "You've got no other options."

Lady Solar was silent.

Then she smiled – with all the sorrow in her eyes.

"No, I do," she said, and picked up her sun-staff.

The Guardians, along with the Man in the Moon, could do nothing but watch as the Woman in the Sun plunged the sharpest end of her staff into her chest.

* * *

"So the Woman in the Sun killed herself?"

"Yes." MiM sighed. "She really changed since I last saw her." Then he hung his head. "I'm sorry, this is really all my fault."

"It is, it is." Bloody Mary looked to him. "But it didn't mean she should have done that."

"You're not a very effective counselor." MiM tried to laugh. "The good thing is, at least you're not going to murder me."

"I lost joy in that ever since your little Moon Phoenix." Mary shrugged. "Was she with the other Protectors when they were turned back to humans?"

MiM blinked. "I know for a fact she wasn't on the Moon the night I turned insane. Perhaps she knew something was going on. As a human, she had incredible clairvoyance, after all."

"Incredible, indeed."

Tsar Lunar and Bloody Mary stared out at the wide expanse of the English Channel, before Mary added, "The chemistry between you and the Woman and the Sun was unquestionable, though."

"I thought you hadn't even met her."

"I had. Just once, before she sealed me away in a mirror."

"And in that moment, you knew?"

"Of course." She smiled snidely.

MiM smirked as well. "Kind of like what you had with the Matchmaker."

The smile on Mary's face was now frozen.

"You knew."

"I'm supposed to know things. Of course, the Woman in the Sun told me first. He was her Protector, after all."

They sat in silence. Mary blinked, before deciding to say, "So where are the Guardians?"

"They're at Death City, giving the report to Lord Death. I couldn't bring myself to go without seeing you first." MiM glanced up to her. "And I don't mean that in a weird way."

"Why would you think I would take that in a weird way?" Mary asked. "I'm the one who was fighting the 'weird' one."

"And dating him on the side," MiM said under his breath, loud enough for Mary to hear.

Mary frowned, but regained her composure. "...So what are you going to do, now that the Woman in the Sun is dead?"

"I don't know," MiM sighed. "I was hoping to see her again–"

"Alright, enough of your angst," Mary said. "Don't you derive joy from the children anymore like you used to?"

"I do," MiM answered, "but I'm not going back to the Moon ever again. It holds too many bad memories for me."

Mary rolled her eyes. Then she glanced over the scenery before her, at the tall grasses and the black-mist lionesses roaming about the island.

"I think I too am getting sick of these surroundings," she commented. "There's nothing left for me here now that Jack Frost has the staff. Therefore I would like to direct the rest of my energies elsewhere."

MiM raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I want what happened to the Protectors," she said. "Of course, on my own terms." She looked at MiM seriously. "I want to finally die. I've had enough of this life."

"You – you want to become human?" MiM said. "But that means you won't remember Cupid, or the Moon Phoenix - I mean, Lucy."

"It's best for me to forget them," Mary said, in a strangely gentle tone. "They're not coming back either way."

MiM blinked, and then reached into his coat.

"Actually, to be honest, I was kind of hoping I could help you with something while I was here," he said, pulling out a large, worn spellbook. "I found this in the Lunar Lamas' observatory. Figures they had it a copy of it all along."

"But that's–" she stopped herself, and then scoffed, "–you actually want to do it right here and now?"

"Hey, there's no better time than the present," he answered. MiM opened the book and turned its faded pages to one he hadn't visited in a long time. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Mary said, and looked down at the sword she was holding in her hand. Then she swung her arm back, and threw the sword into the water.

* * *

"You have done well," Lord Death said as he eyed the demon tool the Guardians were handing him. "Shibusen can't thank you enough for bringing an end to the threat that the Woman in the Sun presented, especially now that I know what exactly she had in mind."

"Actually, you probably could thank us enough," Jack Frost shrugged, "but the Guardians know what you mean."

The reaper cracked a smile. "Well, you're not the only ones who have traveled to the moon to stop someone more closely related to you than you think..."

"Is no big deal!" Santa Claus waved a hand. "We are just happy to help with saving the world and all that."

Starlight looked about her, then at the Grim Reaper, and had a thought.

"Excuse me, Lord Death," she asked, "how is the Book of Eibon? Will you keep it with BREW?"

Kid looked down at the magic cube in his hands, and tossed it up in the air, almost carelessly. "I think I need to keep them together. Someone I know needs it more than I do." Though Katherine didn't get it at first, Kid gave her a significant look, and she finally understood.

"So, you don't have anymore missions for us anymore, right?" the Tooth Fairy asked, clasping her hands together.

"No, you can go back to taking care of and watching over the children," Lord Death replied. "I for one want to take a rest."

North stretched. "We probably need break as well." He put his hands on his sides.

"But the anklebiters won't be the same without us," the Easter Bunny waved a paw. "And I'm speakin' from experience."

Lord Death tucked BREW away into his cloak, to take it out when he needed to. "So I'm guessing that unless there is more you'd like to tell me, the Guardians are dismissed."

"And dismissed we are," Jack said, swinging the moon-staff from one hand to another. With that, the Guardians gave their farewells to Lord Death, and then together left the Death Room.

Lord Death watched them leave, and then looked behind him at the mirror.

* * *

The Guardians walked outside Shibusen, and were surprised – this time, pleasantly – to see Tsar Lunar standing outside next to the sleigh.

"Whoa, back so soon?" Jack asked, a corner of his mouth turning upwards.

MiM uncrossed his arms. "I had a little help from a grateful friend." He turned his head to the side, and laughed a little. "Don't get a lot of those anymore."

Jack drew his lips into a thin line, and looked at the moon-staff in his hands. "Hey, Manny..."

"You can keep it."

"No, I can't." Jack sighed. "I mean, I know how much something like an old staff means to people."

"I do too." MiM raised his eyebrows. "It's the least I can do after your own staff..."

The two of them grew silent, until North came over and clapped the two of them on the shoulder.

"Hey, now, no time for brooding!" North said. "We have protected the children of Earth once again!"

"Yep," Bunny said. "Nothing greater than that."

"I should know." MiM smiled, and looked up at Katherine. She smiled as well.

Sandy walked up to MiM this time, and made a sand image of the sleigh along with a question mark above his head.

"Mm, no," MiM waved a hand in reply. "I think I'll just go and talk to Lord Death myself for a while. After all, he's going to have a very special visitor. Someone you might want to stick around for." Here he winked at Sandy, and Jack didn't quite get it, though Tooth and Nightlight giggled while Katherine smirked knowingly. Sandy on the other hand blushed golden brown.

MiM gestured to everyone. "As for you, Guardians, I think you have a job to do. It's time you get back out on the field."

"And after this, what're you going to do?" Tooth asked.

"You know him," Jack said. "He'll probably do a little more soul searching, or something like that."

"Wander the earth," MiM continued Jack's train of thought naturally, "pay ancient ruins of the Golden Age, as well as the children, a visit. No one needs to know who I am. Or was."

"You'll be a traveler, then, mate," Bunny's ears twitched.

"Yes. A Traveler."

North clapped his hands together. "Well, we must be going, then!"

The Guardians all nodded, and then most bundled themselves into the sleigh, while Tooth and Sandy settled for a little dreamsand airplane.

MiM watched them prepare to leave, his hands behind his back and a smile on his face.

Katherine stared at him for a little while, and then turned to North.

"North, I forgot something," she told him. North looked at her, and smiled softly. "Well, go on, then," he said to her. She then turned and flew out of the sleigh for a moment, before stopping in front of MiM. She bent over so that she could whisper in his ear.

"You know, MiM," she said, "if you need a friend, you've always got us. Your Guardians."

MiM stared up at her as she beamed at him, literally radiant. She then waved at him, and flew over to the sleigh, getting in once more.

Starlight and Jack Frost shared a look, before they both turned to give MiM one last glance as North snapped the reins.

MiM raised a hand in farewell, a relieved smile finally showing.

_Of course, Katherine. I'll always remember that._

* * *

**(A/N: One more chapter to go!)**


	17. Sun

Up in the sky hung a smiling sun.

If one stared at it for too long, their eyes would burn with the heat of this strange-looking entity. In fact, many a child had cried because of its rather hellish grin. Indeed, it wasn't the most comforting thing to look at.

But as it had been before, when it was just a bright ball of fire, a spotlight on a blue background, even now the sun was a symbol of hope.

And there were people who lived on this Earth who had reason to be hopeful.

This included the Guardians.

* * *

This included the man working tirelessly in the North Pole, overseeing every fantastic creation that his helpers could make. He smiled when he saw the one boy in his workshop, the one who somehow knew what this and that child would like the most.

This included the incredible fairy who made sure that every child got something in exchange for the pain they suffered due to their pulled-out tooth. They would know that it was all worth it when they found the money under their pillows, and this gratitude would be enough for her and her little helpers. She would cherish it for centuries to come.

This also included the man-sized rabbit – no, Pooka – who gave the children something to look for on one particular day of the year. What joy they would have when the eggs and the chocolates that they looked forward to were found, by parent and child alike! Yes, this was enough for him.

Quite so, this included the small man who spread dreams and fantasies to children every night, so that they could play and be happy even while they were asleep. Golden days would await them after they dreamed. For now it will be alright while they slept.

This included the boy of frost, who came out every time winter rolled around. He could create snow and ice so that people could have a unique way of playing in this weather, even while it was so cold. People needed such a thing in this time, especially when the biting chill was so paralyzing.

Also, this included the spectral girl, who flew across the skies at night, bringing her warm smile and brilliant stories to the children who loved such things. They deserved such tales and such smiles, and she was always ready to give them even when she didn't feel like she could. But she always found that she did.

* * *

And of course, this included the Traveler, formerly the Man in the Moon, who walked across the globe in search of a temporary home, for anyone who would show him a reason to have faith in humanity, even when humanity seemed to have done such horrible things.

People had faith in him, even when he had done horrible things.

So there was a reason to believe this of the parents, who were the first guardians of the children. And where the parents couldn't reach, well, there was always a reason to believe in the Guardians.

Believe, believe, believe.

Under the sun, this word was a strong one.

* * *

**(A/N: Finally, I'm done with Once and For All! You probably haven't noticed, though. Oh well. I went through with it and I finished it. I wish I had something better to say, though.)**


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